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Psychology of the Language 
Interest of Children 



A. W. TRETTIEN 



A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACUI^TY OF 
CI.ARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., IN PARTI AI, 
FULFII^MENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, AND ACCEPTED 
ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF G. STANLEY HAI,!, 



Reprint from the Pedagogical Seminary 

June, 1904 

Vol. XI, pp. 113-177 



Psychology of the Language 
Interest of Children 



A. W. TRETTIEN 



A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACUI.TV OF 
CI.ARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., IN PARTIAI, 
FULFIIvMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, AND ACCEPTED 
ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF G. STANLEY HALL 



Reprint from the Pedagogical Seminary 

June, 1904 

Vol. XI, pp. 113-177 



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PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF 
CHILDREN. 



By A. W. Trettien, Fellow in Psychology, Clark University. 



Introductory Statement. 

Since the pendulum of psychological investigation has grad- 
ually moved from the metaphysical toward a more scientific 
point of view during the last two decades, many important ob- 
servations have been made upon child life which begin to suggest 
what the deeper interests of childhood are. And when genetic 
psychology has answered that question, it will be called upon, 
at least, to suggest an answer to a pedagogical corollary, — 
What food, physical and mental, will best contribute to a most 
complete development of the child? 

The following study is an attempt to correlate such observa- 
tions as have been made upon the language of children; and to 
trace the periods of growth and development of the language 
interest, in order to bring into -relief those stages in the unfold- 
ing mind in which the growth of language has been especiallj^ 
significant or intense. The data which have contributed to 
this study have been gathered from the individual records of 
children, from the general psychological, child study and philo- 
logical literature, supplemented by observations of parents and 
teachers. 

When Froebel gave to the world his "Education of Man," 
nearly a century ago, he seems to have anticipated the line of 
the modern genetic movement when he said, "The mind and 
the outer world (first as nature), and language, which unites 
the two, are the poles of boy life, as they were the poles of 
mankind as a whole in the approaching maturity." He there 
indicated the fundamental lines of interests along which the 
human race has moved and lived and had its being, namely, 
Art, Language, Religion, and Science. And each of these in- 
terests, by the peculiar form of its reactions, has left the ear- 
marks of progress upon the race. Before language in its present 
form was possible in the race; before it could develop to any 
degree of complexity, the .senses, nerves, muscles, tongue, lips, 
larynx, and lungs were all made. On the other hand, as the 
race moved on in its progress from homo alalus to homo sapietis, 
the earlier forms of impulsive expressive movements became 
inadequate under conditions of a larger experience, dumb signs 



4 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

and inarticulate cries were superseded by the higher forms of 
articulate speech and, as Drummond says, "a body of language 
was built up word by word, as the body was built cell by cell." 

Psychologists and philologists are alike agreed in that the 
language interest holds a unique position in mental develop- 
ment. "There is not in a known language," says Professor 
Whitney, "a single item which can be truly claimed to exist 
'by nature;' each stands in its accepted use 'by an act of attri- 
bution,' in which men's circumstances, habits, preferences, and 
will are the determining forces." Language thus becomes an 
index of the stages of culture. On the other hand, speech has 
been the ladder by which the mind has ascended into the higher 
forms of thought. Or, to change the figure with Sir William 
Hamilton, "Language is to the mind precisely what the arch 
is to the tunnel. The power of thinking and the power of ex- 
cavating are not dependent on the word in the one case nor on 
the mason work in the other; but without these subsidiaries 
neither process could be carried on beyond its rudimentary 
commencement. ' ' 

In studying the language interests of children, we are in a 
field not without its difficulties. While much has been written 
upon the development of language in the race as well as in the 
child, there are at present only a limited number of well authen- 
ticated continuous observations of child language available. 

The second difficulty results from the fact that the language 
interest in its fuller development becomes exceedingly complex 
and intricate, since its roots extend into every realm of the 
soul, — senses, emotions, intellect, and volition all play upon 
the cords of vocal expression. And if, as Meumann says 
(54, p. 8) , the development of language is to proceed normally, 
there must have occurred at no point a defect or a retardation 
of the physical or psychical growth. The attention of the child, 
his power of concentration, his memory, and above all a dispo- 
sition (gemuthsleben), indeed, peculiar impulses, like the im- 
pulse of imitation, must be absolutely intact — the powers which 
correspond to this period of development. If even a single one 
of these general psychological conditions is not fully met, the 
development of speech becomes abnormal, either by being un- 
duly retarded, or by remaining absent entirely. 

General Theories of Language Development. 

Since the days of Psammetichus, King of Egypt (d, 610 B.C. ), 
the speech of little children has been a source of wonderment to 
man; for this ancient king, according to Herodotus, began to 
speculate upon the problem of the origin of language. He 
pursued the experimental method in attempting to find the 
original language of primitive man; since language was be- 



THE IvANGUAGE INTEREST OP CHILDREN. 5 

lieved to be innate, and that if a child could be entirely secluded 
from human contact, he would revert instinctively to the primi- 
tive language of the race. With this theory in mind, accord- 
ing to Farrar, the great king placed two infants under the care 
of a shepherd with the injunction to let them suck the milk of 
a goat and to speak to no one in their presence. When the 
shepherd, after two years, came to them, the little ones came 
forward with outstretched hands uttering the word bekos, 
which was found to be the Phrygian word for bread. The 
king thereupon concluded that the Phrygians were the most 
primitive people and spoke the original language. 

While the origin of race language remains as much of a mys- 
tery as ever, the principal theories of development in modern 
thought naturally fall into two general classes; those which 
place the emphasis upon the impulse of expression, and those 
which place the emphasis upon the impulse of imitation. To 
the first class belongs (i) the natural sound theory, which 
holds that speech sounds are interjectional forms of language. 
(2) To this class, also, belongs the invention theory, which 
holds that the race and, in a measure, the child sets about and 
invents a language for itself. The invention theory, as such, 
is no longer accepted by psychologists. (3) The supernatural 
or miraculous theory may also be placed under this class. It 
holds that language was a special gift of God to man. To the 
second general class belongs the imitation or onomatopoetic 
theory, which is historically the oldest, and it is still most 
widely accepted to-day. Its fundamental position is that speech 
is directly or indirectly derived from the imitation of sounds 
perceived. On the whole the most tenable theory from a psy- 
chological point of view, and one which, in a measure, unifies 
the acceptable features of the various theories, is the theory 
which Professor Wundt (91, II, p. 603) sets forth in the 
developmental theory. This theory holds that language was 
not superimposed upon the mind at any stage, but develops 
with the mind as a form of mental reaction, a differentiated 
form of the pantomimic movements. As the infant is born 
into an exceedingly complex language environment, and the 
impulse of imitation manifests itself early, language necessarily 
becomes of precocious development. This theory recognizes 
the function of both the spontaneous impulse of expression as 
well as the imitation in the development of child language. 

As regards the physiological and psychological processes by 
which the faculty of articulate speech was acquired, John Fiske 
believes that no adquate explanation has yet been offered either 
upon the Darwinian or upon any other theory. "For," he 
continues, "the so called 'bow-wow' or onomatopoetic theory 
is no doubt correct, so far as it goes, as a description of facts 



6 The; language interest of chii^dren. 

which have attended the acquisition of speech, but it hardly 
goes to the root of the matter. The power of enunciating 
sound so as to communicate ideas and feelings is certainly an 
art. . . . For the original acquisition of such an art two con- 
ditions are requisite, — the physiological capacity of the vocal 
organs for producing articulate sounds, and the psychological 
capacity of abstraction implied in the conception of sign and 
symbol. It is due to the lengthened period of infancy in man 
that gives to the psychological capacity a certain amount of 
flexibility or capacity of framing new combinations of reaction 
which is at the bottom of the Darwinian theory. ' ' 

Factors upon which the Devei^opment of I^anguage 

Depends. 

In studying the periods of the language interest of children, 
three periods have generally been recognized in child-study 
literature which correspond very closely to the periods of physi- 
cal growth on the one hand and to the development of certain 
psychical activities on the other. 

The studies of Dr. Burke on the general growth of children, 
and Vierordt, Boyd, His, Meynert and others on the develop- 
ment of the central nervous system show that the first period 
of accelerated growth occurs during the first year of the child's 
life; that there is a period of gradual decrease in the rate ot 
growth from the first to the sixth or seventh years in girls, and 
seventh or eighth years in boys; and another period of acceler- 
ated growth from about ten years in girls and eleven in boys, 
to fourteen in girls and sixteen in boys. With each of these 
larger waves of growth there are lesser fluctuations of develop- 
ment peculiar to that period, such as the development of the 
general nervous system, awakening of the special sense-organs, 
muscular co-ordinations, organs of expression, and the like, 
which lie at the foundation of the growth and changes in lan- 
guage. 

The second or psychological factor upon which the growth 
of language depends is the instinctive tendenc}'^ to imitate. As 
Mr. Darwin says: "I cannot doubt that language owes its 
origin to the imitation and modification of various natural 
sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive 
cries, aided by signs and gestures." And Tarde maintains 
that imitation plays the same role in the psychic life that 
heredit}' does in the organic life or that vibration does among 
the inorganic bodies, and that language itself is the "great 
vehicle of all imitation." 

Psychologists who have treated imitation have generally 
recognized this tendency of the soul either as an instinct or as 
an ordinary sensori-motor reaction which finds its differentia in 



THS LANGUAGE) INfKR^Sf OF CHILDREN. 7 

the peculiarity of its muscular discharge, which Baldwin calls 
a "circular activity; " that is, there is a tendency of a reaction 
to repeat its own stimulating process. The child continues to 
repeat the movement he has found eflScient in producing an 
interesting result, the germ of which, as Professor Baldwin has 
shown, lies in ideo-motor suggestion. 

Three distinct periods of imitative movements have been ob- 
served in human development. During the first months of 
life, the ' organic ' reaction occurs which tends to repeat its 
own stimulation, such as muscular contractions that have be- 
come habitual. This belongs essentially to the simpler sort, 
and is only an approximate imitation. It is psychological 
only in that there is a sensori-motor suggestion, the infant's 
reaction may not even approximate the copy or make an 
attempt to repeat or improve by a second trial. This form of 
imitative reaction, perhaps better biological adaptation, plays 
an important role up to the eighth or ninth month of the child's 
life. The second period begins in the latter half of the first 
year and is especially intense during the second and third years 
of life. It is the psychological or conscious phase ; when it 
appears it is the predominant activity of the mind. "The 
copy," says Professor Baldwin, "becomes consciously available 
in two ways: first, as sensation, the individual seeks to re- 
produce the sounds heard or the movements seen; and second, 
as memory, by which the copy is recalled and reproduced again 
and again. ' ' lyloyd Morgan has summed up this period as fol- 
lows: "the intelligent stage of the profiting by chance experi- 
ence. Intelligence aims at the reinstatement of pleasurable 
situations and the suppression of those which are the reverse." 

But there is still a third period of imitation and imitative 
reaction. While in the first period the reaction is principally 
in the realm of the unconscious, in the second period the reaction 
is repeated in a try-try-again manner until great exactness is 
acquired; in the third period the imitator becomes an artist. 
For close in the wake of imitation there comes the imagination, 
and imitation becomes not merely reproductive but productive 
as well, and its development may be observed in the periods of 
co-operative play, of popular fads, and of dramatic and artistic 
effects. Imitation now changes from the reproducing of an 
objective copy to the reproducing of a subjective model or ideal. 

The Period op Infancy : or the Primary Period op 
Language Development. 

When we turn to a consideration of the language interest 
itself, we find that all observations of child language point with 
irresistible force to the conclusion that there are periods in 
which the "language-making instinct," as Mr. Horatio Hale 



8 THK I^ANGUAGE INTEREST OE CHILDREN. 

(30) calls it, is especially strong. In tracing the curve of de- 
velopment it falls into line with the curve of the general 
physical and mental growth. 

I. The first or primary period of language is, of course, the 
period of the learning of the mother -tongue, and extends from 
birth, the time of the reflex, expressive movements of the cry 
to about the middle of the third year, under normal conditions, 
when the child is able to express its thoughts by.the use of the 
conventionalized symbols. 

II. With the increased power of the imagination, there 
may be observed a second period of the language interest, ex- 
tending from the third to the eleventh or twelfth years. This 
is essentially a period of play upon language — sounds, words, 
and sentence-structure have been mastered as an instrument of 
communication — but now there is an added interest which 
centres in the sound of the word, or its rhythmic combinations 
with other sounds. 

III. There is still a third period when the language tide 
rises, and that is during the years of adolescence, constituting 
what Miss Williams has called ' ' a second day of grace for those 
who, perhaps through no fault of their own, have failed to 
properly improve the first. ' ' 

I. The Primary Language Period. 

It has generally been recognized that the child passes through 
three distinct periods of development in learning to speak its 
mother-tongue. Lindner (47, p. 3) has given the following 
general classification of the expressive movements of infants : 
I. The period of expressive movements, gesture, or sound, 
expressing states of emotion without the purpose of communi- 
cation; 2. The period in which the child begins to understand 
the meaning and purpose of language, but has not yet developed 
the power of speech co-ordinations to enable it to express its 
thoughts and feelings by means of articulate sounds; 3. The 
period in which the child develops those co-ordinations which 
enable it to express its thoughts and feelings by means of 
articulate sounds. 

Kussmaul (45a, p. 47) has classified the periods from the 
point of articulation: i. The period of primitive sounds, the 
purely reflex which have a much larger range than the adult 
phonetic alphabet; 2. The period of imitative sounds; 3. The 
period of thought expression. If we turn to the mental stages 
of linguistics with Oltuszewski (59), we may recognize: i. The 
primitive period characterized by the reflex pain phenomena of 
early sounds; 2. The period of the development of the lin- 
guistic memory centres, the auditory and motor memories; 3. 
The period of the association of ideas with words. 



THB I^ANGUAGK INTBREST OF CHILDREN. 9 

I. THE PERIOD OF EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENTS. 

First Period — The reflex and Automatic Period, I^iudner 
(47) speaks of this first period of the child's life as the physiolog- 
ical step of language development. The physiological develop- 
ment is significant. The organs of respiration and articulation 
are still rudimentary in their development. The sense-organs 
become adjusted during this period to receive the stimulations 
from the external environment, and the brain centres begin to 
function. 

On the side of impressions, the experiments of Kussmaul, 
Gensmer, Kroner, Preyer and others go to show that children 
respond to the stimulations of taste, touch, and smell at birth. 
The observations recorded show that the eye is sensitive to 
light on the first day of life, and that the ear is sensitive to 
sound several days later. By the close of the second week, 
passive attention makes its appearance, and the child begins to 
stare at objects of light and to listen to sounds; and several 
weeks later, it can be soothed by the sound of the mother's 
voice. 

On the side of expression, there are present at birth the reflex 
muscular movements which are not entirely undifferentiated 
and unco-ordinated in the cry. Perez (61, p. 11) observed 
that pre-established association between certain movements and 
certain sensations, agreeable or otherwise, can be seen at birth. 
The vague incoherent movements of the arms, legs and facial 
muscles, which young babies make, as if trying to escape from 
the pressure of their clothes, or struggling against some pain- 
ful state of their system, all belong to the first class of indefinite 
reflex actions. These automatic movements early differentiate 
into expressive movements — the smile and even laughter have 
been observed in infants during the fifth day — " perhaps with- 
out intention or sentiment of pleasure, and simply the result of 
chance action of the mechanism. ' ' 

By the end of the fourth month, the child is able to control 
its expressive movements to such an extent as to enable it to 
turn away its head from disagreeable objects or remove the ob- 
jects with its hands. These early movements lie at the founda- 
tion of all sign and gesture language, and they become the 
more significant when they accompany vocal expressions. The 
child's first utterance is a cry of distress. This has been 
variously interpreted by interested spectators. To Semmig it 
sounded like " heavenly music;" to Kant it appeared "a cry 
of indignation and of wrath;" to others still, a "lament over 
the sin and misery of this world." " But," says Preyer (65, p. 
211), " these interpretations go to wreck upon the repeatedly 
established fact that new-born children without any brain at 



lO THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

all cry out, and many a healthy new-born, as Darwin reports, 
does not cry, but sneezes." As recognized by psychologists 
to-day, the first cry is an expirational reflex, caused by the 
pain sensations accompanying birth, the sudden change of 
temperature, and other tactile sensations. There is a production 
of a current of air which passes in its early stages unmodified 
by the vocal organs, and consequently the sound is undifferen- 
tiated in character. The same tone, pitch, and quality of voice 
serves to express the child's emotional states. In either case, 
whether it is a cry or a sneeze, the utterance is purely a reflex 
movement and occurs as a physiological process rather than a 
psychological directed by consciousness. Very soon, however, 
Preyer observed it during the first week of life, this undifferen- 
tiated reflex begins to take on a language character; and begins 
to serve the child as a means by which it can express its 
emotional states. Discomforts, as hunger, thirst, cold, wet, 
and pain, produce different reactions; consequently there is a 
differentiation of the expressive sounds. The cry of pain and 
fear becomes short and explosive; the cry of hunger, a long 
drawn out crj' of pain interrupted by frequent pauses. The 
tone of voice also passes through several stages of evolution. 
As has been shown by Garbini (24, p. 53), the first cries (re- 
flex) are weak and without individual tone; but all tones, 
from the deep chest tones to the strongly nasal ones, may be 
heard. After the first two months, the voice appears, and 
settles usually in a clear falsetto. 

(i). Early Differentiated Cry. 

Experienced nurses and mothers can early interpret the 
variations of the cry, which the child itself may not hear, 
and administer to its wants accordingly. The child, on the 
other hand, soon becomes conscious, in expressing emotional 
states, of a mechanism by means of which it can gain certain 
wants, and as soon as it has made this discovery, it employs 
the modifications of the vocal utterances as a vehicle of com- 
munication. " Herein," says Von Frenzel (22, p. 28), "lie 
the most primitive combinations of the various speech centres; 
and it is here that we must seek for the beginning of the develop- 
ment of speech. ' ' 

Observers generally agree that the expressions of discomfort 
precede, in development, those of pleasure or comfort. Mrs. 
Moore (57) sums up her observations upon this period as fol- 
lows; " Feelings of discomfort were felt at birth, but not dis- 
tinguished one from another, they were strong. Pleasure was 
not felt as much at birth. Movements directed toward the 
attainment of comfort replaced in a measure the mere expression 
of discomfort. After the growth of desires, development pro- 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OP CHII.DREN. II 

ceeded rapidly, in response to a demand for the satisfaction of 
them." 

M., ist week. Above all, crying is characteristic: it is piercing, and 
persistent in pain, a whimpering in an uncomfortable posture, unin- 
terrupted and very loud in the cold bath. When the child cries for 
hunger, the cry is interrupted by frequent pauses, the eyes are gener- 
ally closed tightly, the tongue drawn back and spread out. 

F., i6th week. We can distinguish the sounds for hunger, sleepi- 
ness, anger, and joy at four months of age. On the whole, there are 
but two kinds of sounds which are unmistakable, — the one denoting 
feeling of discomfort or pain, the other a feeling of comfort and pleas- 
antness. 

M. By the ninth week, one could distinguish the hunger-cry, the 
cry of pain and impatience, and one of appeal, which was used when, 
after crying from hunger, he saw his mother approaching his bed. In 
the eleventh week he added a mingled cry of pleasure and impatience 
by which he greeted the appearance of his dinner. In the nineteenth 
week, when accidentally hurt, he cried in a way to show plainly that 
not only his body, but his feelings, were hurt. 

M., 1st day. When uncomfortable the child cried. 

loth day. Tear secretion observed for the first time. 

17th day. Fretting, a sort of cry, expressed discomfort. 

55th day. Displeasure indicated by hard crying and rigidity of the 
whole body, which was so complete that if taken by the hands he could 
be raised to his feet without having bent the vertebral column or limbs. 

12th week. The child cried "en£^" when hungry, and "Ma-a-a" 
when hurt. 

M., 6th week. In the sixth week (36th day) the child laughed in 
response to his mother's crooning, and the following week he re- 
sponded to it with his first word, "^00." 

M., 5th week. The sensibility to sound has increased to such a de- 
gree that the child seldom sleeps in the day time if any one walks 
about or speaks in the room. 

14th week. Refusal expressed by "nannana, 7iand." 

i6th week. Unpleasant feelings expressed by predominance of the 
ua-ua, ua. 

7th week. To talking and singing he replied by cooing. 

Von Frenzel cites a case where a child of two months expressed 
comfort and discomfort by different modifications of the vowel a. 

M. From the fourteenth week loud or high pitched voices caused 
him to draw down the corners of his mouth and cry. When his mother 
said sharply to him, "What is the matter?" he cried piteously. 

F., 24tli week. The vocal organs now begin to assume some power 
of control over the sounds produced, resulting in the well-known 
''coo." 

F. In the eighteenth week, and before, the following cries were 
distinctly recognizable, — discomfort or distress, anger, sleepiness, and 
a cry for needed attention. 

(2) Spontaneous Babbliiigs. 

By the close of the second month of life, considerable prog- 
ress has been made in muscular co-ordination and control of 
the tongue and lips. Attention and memory have made their 
appearance, and the child begins to take delight in vocal bab- 
blings, the practice field of linguistics, with a marked increase 
in the number and variety of articulate sounds. Mrs. Moore 



12 THE r,ANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN, 

(57) observed that by the close of the fourth month her child 
had made nearly all the sounds which occur in the language. 
"Yet," she says, "I had the exact record of but few which 
had been pronounced as isolated sounds, or as short syllables, 
and so distinctly as to render their identification easy and cer- 
tain." And Preyer (65, p. 107) found it still difl&cult to 
recognize definite syllables among the more varied utterances 
in the ninth month of the child's life. But he found the voice 
although loud and inarticulate at times already modulated and 
expressive of psychical states. 

As Tracy (81) and Lukens (49) have shown, and Meumanu 
(54) and Ament (i) later, the vowel sounds appear first as 
differentiated sounds, and long before the sixth month the 
primitive vowels are combined with one another and with con- 
sonants. The labials b — p — m appear first and as initial 
sounds. To quote Meumann (54, p. 11), — "In the develop- 
ment of the child's spontaneous babblings, a definite process 
may be observed. It begins with the vowel sounds, especially 
with a and a, and several others difiicult to describe. Then 
appear the consonants in combination with vowels, in the order 
of labials and dentals, but often the more difiicult gutterals 
appear early in the stage. ' ' 

M. By the twelfth week he began to use his tongue which had 
hitherto moved but little in his mouth. Thereafter there was a rapid 
increase in the number and variety of sounds made by the child in 
crying and babbling. 

29th week. '■^Bob-bo}'' indicated comfort; "Mom-ma'^ indicated 
hunger; singing noise made by the child meant contentment. 

F. In the seventh week, for some days, she experimented with the 
tongue a good deal, putting out and withdrawing the tip through 
pursed lips. In the eighth month, she returned more intelligently to 
this, and from time to time during the month had a habit of running 
out her tongue and moving it about, feeling her lips and trying its 
motion. 

F. Began to use the googly-goo language suddenly in the fifteenth 
week; also made vowel sounds alone. 

M., 7th week. No account of the infant's babblings was kept aside 
from the fact that in his very early days he "talked back" with the 
word "goo," which later changed to "gagoo," and that in the fifteenth 
week he often amused himself by making a continuous sing-song tone. 

M., 52d day. From this day the child began to express his feelings 
of pleasure by babblings which were just like those of his sister — 
cirra or arra. The babbling increased according to his physical com- 
forts. 

54th day. The child entertained himself for over an hour. 

F., 59th day. Louise began to babble on the 59th day. 

9th month. The complex combination of movements of eye, larynx, 
tongue, lips, and arm muscles appears more and more. 

There occurs at this time also a rapid development in the 
recognition and discrimination of sounds. Of the thousands of 
words, says Ament (i, p. 35), which have been hurled at the 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHH,DREN. 1 3 

child during its early months of life, all have fallen unheard 
and uncomprehended until finally the soul catches, not only 
the general tone, but also the finer distinctions in the sound of 
its mother's voice, which begins to carry with it a meaning. 
This power of discrimination arises during the middle of the 
first year. Miss Shinn and Mrs. Hall observed it first during 
the fifth month of life. And there may also now be sugges- 
tions of sound imitations. 

F., 5th month (i37tli day). I was hoarse with a cold and when I 
spoke, the baby looked and listened in a way that I thought showed a 
sense of something unusual about my voice. At this time I often read 
softly to her mother as she nursed the baby and sang low to her mean- 
while. On the 148th day, as I did this, the baby suddenly raised her 
head and gave me an inquiring look, evidently for the first time distin- 
guishing our voices as two separate sounds. 

M., 5th month (140th day). The recognition of the mother's voice 
was the first positive evidence given of recognition of a definite sound. 
The child soon knew his own name, or at least knew when he was 
called; but it required three calls to induce him to turn toward the 
sound. At the first call, a change took place in the facial expression; 
at the second, he laughed; and at the third, he turned toward the 
speaker. 

F. In the twenty-second week, I noticed her opening her mouth 
and making a funny sound in her throat, and after experimenting was 
convinced that she was trying to imitate my way of saying "da-ba" to 
her. Twenty-eighth week she still tries to imitate "da-ba," and likes 
to hear the prolonged sound of s/i, a clucking sound, a smack, and the 
drippingor running of water. 

2. THE PERIOD OF ARTICULATION. 

(i) Imitative Sounds and Babblings. 

While there is no hard and fast line of demarkation between 
the first and second periods of the development of the mother- 
tongue, the first period is essentially one of physiological ad- 
justment with its reflex and automatic sounds and movements, 
while the second is marked by an accelerated mental develop- 
ment; first, by the development of the language memory cen- 
tres (auditory and motor memories), and second, by the increased 
tendency to imitate the sounds and movements which issue from 
the environment. 

The child now develops an articulate language with the same 
natural facility that any other species of animals does the vocal 
utterances peculiar to its kind, and takes special delight in 
uttering the onomatopoetic sounds which as yet have no mean- 
ing to it. The range of the sounds embraces, not only the 
articulations of the mother-tongue, but also those of other lan- 
guages, since, as Ament (i, p. 34) says, the child's mouth is 
still unbridled, and the vocal organs can move in any manner 
with equal facility. This practice upon the ' ' raw material of 
the language," as Taine calls it, passes along quite a definite 



14 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHII^DREN. 

line of growth. And Meumann (54, p. 7) has traced it from the 
spontaneous impulse to utter sounds, inarticulate and unintelli- 
gent, to the voluntary expression of articulations expressing 
thoughts and emotions. 

This is the period which embraces, according to Dr. Tracj', 
the second six months of life — the child makes rapid strides in 
the imitation of sounds and in the comprehension of the mean- 
ing of words and gestures. It understands many words, but 
uses very few of them; it delights in the stimulations of rhyth- 
mic sounds and movements. It also knows the members of the 
household and recognizes their names, as well as parts of its 
own body. 

While simple imitation may have appeared during the early 
months (Preyer observed it at the age of three or four months), 
conscious imitation first appears between the seventh and the 
ninth months of life, after the child has learned to use its senses, 
and after the memory is well developed. When conscious imi- 
tation does appear, it for a time takes possession of the soul, 
and is the predominant activity. The observations upon child- 
language development put new meaning into Mr. Burke's 
words when he said, "It is by imitation far more than by pre- 
cept that we learn everything; and what we learn thus we ac- 
quire not only more effectually but more pleasantly." The 
child now plays constantly during its waking hours, not only 
upon the sounds which it hears, but it imitates the intonations 
of the voice and gestures as well. 

M., 7 months. Immediately after seeing his grandfather emit a 
short, quick breath, he did so. He then imitated a cough, shrugging 
of shoulders, and other motions. On the following day he imitated 
silent lip-motions, and silently imitated the lip-movements which ac- 
companied vocalized words. 

F., 5 months. Baby Florence, when five months old, imitated very 
closely the growling of a pet dog, and at six months associated the 
name by growling when asked what Bonnie did. 

F., 12 months. Always keeps time by moving her hands up and 
down whenever she hears any quick music. 

M., 8 months. He waved his hand "bye bye," imitating another 
child. 

F., g}4 months. She imitated closing the hand on three different 
occasions, and a week afterward she imitated movements of the lips, 
and certain sounds, as pa, ma, etc. 

M., loX months. One day his mother snapped her fingers. He 
listened attentively to the noise produced. Then he clicked his tongue 
against the hard palate, and the result was a sound almost exactly 
like the one produced by the fingers. 

M., 9 months. He began to repeat a sound of his own upon hearing 
it uttered by another person. 

M., 7>^ months. Very early in the imitation stage, the lip-move- 
ments accompanying such words as " f/tamma," " papa," and "dye- 
bye," were repeated. Two days later, in response to a lady's farewell, 
he imitated both gesture and word. 



the; language; interkst of children. 15 

M., 36 weeks. He acquired the habit of repeatiug a sound of his 
own upon hearing it uttered by another person. 

42 weeks. Intentional, but unintelligent^ repetition of syllables and 
words. These syllables were strung together, and were uttered with 
great rapidity, producing a chatter which, in its tones and inflections, 
bore a striking resemblance to conversation. 

M., 44 weeks. In the eleventh month some syllables emphatically 
pronounced were for the first time correctly repeated. I said '^ada" 
several times, and the attentive child, after some ineffectual move- 
ments of the lips, repeated correctly '^ ada,^'' which he had for that 
matter often said of his own accord long before. It was the first un- 
qiiestionable intentional sound imitation. The same day, when I said 
" mamma," the response was ^'nanna.^^ 

F., 22d week. Tries to imitate "ba ba" which had been repeatedly 
said to her. 

M., 9X months. When told to wipe his nose, he slowly took the 
handkerchief from his mother's hand and obeyed, in imitation of what 
he had previously seen and experienced. The barking of a dog, the 
mooing of a cow, were imitated, as were other sounds previously heard. 

M., 9 months. The child distinctly imitated the intonation of the 
voice when any word or sentence was repeated in the same way several 
times. 

M., II months. Intentional sound-imitation appeared on the 329th 
day. 

F., 9th month. She does a great deal of talking after her kind. It 
is not the syllable exercise of some weeks age, but a conglomeration of 
sounds. 

(2) Understandi7ig of Words. 

By constant repetition of the differentiating sounds, which 
the child soon intellectualizes, the articulate sound or word 
changes from its early nature, in which it expressed merely an 
emotional state, to a second nature in which it becomes an ex- 
pression of an object of thought. This is the first step in the 
independent and intelligent use of language. The hitherto 
spontaneous utterances now begin to suggest to the mind defi- 
nite facts in the world about it, and the child pushes out into a 
new world of thought and the communication of thought by 
means of symbols. While there are large individual differences 
in children as to the time when the understanding of words be- 
gins, yet from the observations which have been made, it oc- 
curs, in general, during the second quarter of the first year of 
life, and the time when the first words are used is between the 
eighth and tenth months in American children, and somewhat 
later in German children. 

As will be noticed in the observations, there occurs a period 
of several months between the time when the child first begins 
to understand the meaning of words and when it is able to use 
them in expressing its own thought. The few sounds which 
have a speech value to the child are strongly marked by into- 
nations and supplemented by gestures. Desire, hunger, joy, 
and fear may be expressed by the same word, but with a dif- 
ference in modulation and gesture setting. Preyer observed 



1 6 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

eleven different meanings of "aita.'" The writer himself ob- 
served seven different meanings of the syllables tl-yi. This is 
a long and an important step in the language development, 
since it marks the time of association of the object with the 
word, and also the time of voluntary control of the motor- 
speech-centres, which enables the infant to produce the correct 
sound at the time when wanted. 

M., i8th week. No evidence was given before the eighteenth week 
that words conveyed any idea. But when the child looked toward the 
speaker at the sound of his name, "Albert," and into the mirror at 
the word " baby," he must have had some idea as to the meaning of 
the words. 

M., 24th week. The words "dinner," "mamma," and "papa," 
were next comprehended. 

F., 28th week. In trying to call attention, she says " a ? " or coughs 
once or twice. When she wants something, when not distressed, she 
says " Mammam," or " bapbap " over and over. Of course these do 
not mean mamma ox papa, for she does not know these words. 

M., 38th week. He began to associate a few words with persons and 
objects. 

M., i8th week. The child looks about the room when his mother 
asks, " Where is papa? " 

M., 20th week. He was carried daily to a clock and had the word 
"tick tick " pronounced for him ; sometime later, while lying in his 
bed, the word " tick tick " was pronounced loudly, whereupon he 
looked toward the clock. 

M., 14th month. The child, standing erect, being held by the hand, 
was asked, " Where is your clothes-press? " whereupon he turns his 
head and his gaze toward the clothes-press, draws the person holding 
him across the room, and opens the press, 

F., 24th week. I am perfectly satisfied that my baby-girl under- 
stood the word, "mamma," on her 164th day. 

F., II months. Her understanding of speech had grown wonder- 
fully, and as she was docile in obeying directions, I could always find 
out whether she knew a thing by name, by saying, " Point to it ! " 
She knew 51 names of people and things, 28 action words, and a few 
adverbial expressions, like "where," and "all gone," — eighty words 
in all, securely associated with ideas. 

F., 8 months. There are indications that she understands when I 
say, " Where's Daddy? " or " Where's Rachel? " 

(3). Language Retardation. 

There occurs at this period, during the last quarter of the 
first year and the first quarter of the second year, a time when 
the development of language may be retarded, or the child 
may even lose some of the words which it has acquired, due 
to teething and learning to walk. This is especially marked 
if there are complications which drain the physical energy or 
direct the attention along other channels. Lindner reports 
that during the two weeks from the 37th to the 39th weeks of 
the child's life there was no growth in language due to the 
suffering from teething. Another observer reports that when 
the baby was learning to walk, during her loth, nth, and 12th 



THE LANGUAGK INTBREvST OF CHILDREN. 1 7 

months, she did not talk as much as before. When she was 
sick, she talked very little, which caused an arrest in language 
development. If, however, the child learns to walk with 
little difficulty it does not interfere with learning to talk; but 
it may even have a stimulating e£fect since it extends the 
infant's realm of experience. 

"Walking was commenced," says Professor Jegi (43, p. 24), 
"in the 14th month. It did not seem to interfere with speech in 
the least, due, I think, to the fact that G. took to walking 
almost in a day, and never again reverted to her former more 
awkward mode of locomotion. These two impulses, walking 
and talking, so important in childhood, manifested themselves 
at the same age; but since walking was mastered so quickly 
and with apparently little conscious effort, the mere ability to 
walk seemed to exert an exhilerating influence on all mental 
activities, and thus stimulated the speech centres as well. The 
acquisition of new words was clearly accelerated." Dr. Trip- 
lett observed that, while there was no increase in weight be- 
tween the 2ist and 26th weeks, there was a rapid development 
of the mental activities. 

3. THE PERIOD OF INDEPENDENT USE OF I^ANGUAGE: 
OR SPEECH CO-ORDINATIONS. 

"In the evolution of language," says Major Powell (64, p. 3), 
"the progress is from a condition where few ideas are expressed 
by a few words to a higher, where many ideas are expressed 
by the use of many words; but the number of all possible ideas 
or thoughts expressed is increased greatly out of proportion 
with the increase of the number of words. ' ' This growth is 
especially evident in the child during the second and third 
years of life, when it learns the independent use of its mother- 
tongue. Three distinct steps have been observed in this pro- 
cess, (i) The stage in which the sentence- word supplemented 
by the aid of gestures is employed in expressing the feelings 
and thoughts; (2) The stage of the sentence without inflec- 
tions; (3) The stage in which the various "parts of speech" 
with their inflections appear. Beginning at about twelve 
months of age, when the vocabulary embraces but a few words, 
which are uttered at intervals, the curve of acquisition of new 
words with distinctness of pronunciation rises slowly to the age 
of fifteen to eighteen months, when, in general, there is an in- 
creased rapidity from a score of words at fifteen months to as 
high as fifteen hundred at thirty months. 

F. After her i8th month birthday, the child's progress became 
much more rapid, and it would not have been possible to take down 
all her new words without giving much more and more continuous 
attention than I had at my disposal. The vocabulary is increasing 



l8 THE IvANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

fast aud almost any word proposed to the child is imitated with some 
real effort at correctness. 

F., 15th to 17th month. Great progress is made; the child has 
learned to walk and even to run. She is gaining new ideas every day, 
and understands a number of phrases, such as these: "Fetch the ball;" 
"Come and stand between papa's legs;" "Go down there." 

M., 21 months. Makes very rapid progress in extending his vocab- 
ulary, but pronounces his words in a manner peculiar to himself. 

M., 38 months. Felix was very backward in learning to speak. 
Suddenly one evening, it was as though the Holy Ghost had descended 
upon him and had poured into him the gift of speech; for he repeated 
everything that was spoken to him very correctly. 

( I ) The Sentence- Word. 

During this stage, the words which the child employs are 
words expressing a want or a novel situation; they are emo- 
tional rather than intellectual, and have properly been called 
"sentence- words." Pollock's little girl used the expression, 
m-m, when she wanted something. lyindner's boy said bat for 
bitte (please). "The child," says Meumann (54, p. 31), "in 
the beginning does not designate the objects or actions about 
it, but expresses its emotional or volitional attitude toward 
these in its first words; it expresses its longings and desires, its 
pleasures and displeasures toward them." In this manner, 
the child early gives the appearance of naming an object. It 
speaks the word wa-wa when it means "I want a drink of 
water." Ament (i, p. 77) observed that the child Louise 
spoke the syllables, ttiam7}id?7tm, on the 206th day without defi- 
nite meaning simply as a spontaneous utterance; on the 254th 
day she used the same expression to designate objects of food 
and drink, and as an exclamation in calling to her sister, and 
also as a negative. On the 571st day she called her mother 
''niSmi;" three weeks later she called her "mdmd.'" On the 
615th day she discontinued the use of mdmmdmni and called 
all solid food ''brodV (bread), liquid food except milk, "bi," 
and milk, "mimi. " The reduplication, babab, as Ament ob- 
served, passed through a similar process of evolution from a 
purely spontaneous emotional expression to an expression asso- 
ciated with some object of want or interest, and finally the 
thought element appears. On the 206th day, babab was a 
spontaneous expression without meaning and soon passed away. 
On the 514th day, she uttered it as an expression of joy on 
seeing her mother. On the 591st day, she called her father 
''baba;" later, her uncle and a picture of a prince were called 
"baba." She then called a large portrait by the same name. 
On the 662d day, she restricted the expression to living per- 
sons, and finally to her father. Professor Dewey (19, p. 64) 
gives a list of seventeen words — the vocabulary of a child of 
twelve months — see there, bye-bye, bottle, door, no, no, stop, thank 



THB language; interkst of children. 19 

you, boo (peek-a-boo), daw, down, papa, mamma, grandma, 
Freddy, burn, fall, water, and concludes that only the four 
proper nouns are, psychologically speaking, names of objects. 
Water is a verb as well as a noun; door is always accompanied 
by gestures of reaching, and an attempt to swing the door; 
daw is apparently a request, an expression of expectation of 
something good to eat and the name of a thing altogether; 
bottle certainly has adjectival and verbal implications as well as 
nominal. "At present," says Professor Dewey, "I shall re- 
gard it as a complex, nominal-adjectival-verbal, the emphasis 
being on the noun, while six weeks previously it was, say, 
verbal-adjectival-nominal. 'Stop,' 'no, no,' 'burn,' 'see there,' 
etc., are equally interjections and verbs." 

M., agtli week. Bab-ba indicated comfort and good feelings. Mom- 
ma indicated hunger and other discomforts. 

loth month. The associations became established in the case of one 
word, papa. Representatives of the class of interjections were among 
the earliest words in the vocabulary. 

M. The first words were interjections. 

M., 9th month. The word bye-bye said so unexpectedly in the 9th 
month continued to be used until one day he refused to say it and did 
not again employ it for ten days, when he used it spontaneously and 
used it regularly after that. The next word was boa-woo, first said in 
imitation of the dog, but very soon used in answer to "What does the 
dog say?" 

42d week. Great advancement was made in the understanding of 
words, but no new words were added until he exclaimed "papa," as 
his father entered the room. 

M., 22d month. Two words only, — papa iox father, and bat or bit 
for bitte — rightly applied of the child's own accord. 

M., 22d month. The child uses the term mdmd and mo-mom. when 
hungry and thirsty. 

M., 14th month. Use da to signify that (das) for the first time to 
express a thought. 

F., 9th month. To-day for the first time baby began to say "bye- 
bye-bye" and to wave her hand. She did this in imitation of some 
one else. 

F., 13th month. The first intelligent word is spoken when she re- 
produced the oft-repeated word, mamma. 

F., I2th month. — M-m generally indicated a want of something. 
Ba-ba was (i) a sort of general demonstrative standing for the child 
herself, other people, or the cat; (2) an interjection expressing satis- 
faction. 

F. Used the word, papa, to indicate that papa had come or gone; 
later for the person. Minn was used to suggest something to eat. 

F., 7th month. The following sounds were used, — mammam, bap- 
pap, dada, kaka, and gaga, nana. 

According to the anthropologist, Waitz, the unit of language 
is not the word, but the sentence. "Or," says Romanes, 
"otherwise and less ambiguously expressed, every word was 
originally itself a proposition, in the sense that of and by itself 
it conveyed a statement." 

The question as to what parts of speech the child first uses 



20 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

has provoked much discussion. Dr. Trac)'' (8 1 ) has undertaken 
to classify the vocabularies of over twenty children, numbering 
fifty-four hundred words, in order to determine the relative 
frequency of the various parts of speech. The average age of 
these children he takes as approximately two years. He gives 
the following results: Nouns, 60%; verbs, 20%; adjectives, 
9%; adverbs, 5%; pronouns, 2%; prepositions, 2%; interjec- 
tions, 1.7%; and conjunctions, 3%. Such classification, how- 
ever, as Dr. John Dewey (19, p. 63) has justly criticised, is 
based upon the adult use of language, and consequently gives 
a wrong conception. Romanes (92, p. 294) calls philologists 
to witness the facts that language did not begin with any of 
our later-day distinctions between nouns, verbs, adjectives, 
prepositions, and the rest; it began as the undifferentiated 
protoplasm of speech, out of which all these "parts of speech" 
had afterwards to be developed by a prolonged course of 
gradual evolution. "Z?zV sprache,'' say Schilling, ''ist nicht 
shickweis oder atomistisch ; sie ist gleich in alleyi ihren Theile7i 
ah ganzes und deninach organisch eyitstandenJ''' 

It is out of this undifferentiated language protoplasm — the 
sentence-word — that the rigid conventionalized forms, or parts 
of speech, rise. We have several continuous observations of 
children's vocabularies which enable us to study this process of 
differentiation somewhat more in detail. The early expres- 
sions are of an emotional nature and are furthermore, as we 
might expect, associated with the vegetative or nutritive func- 
tion. Just as the early movements of the legs and hands are 
mouthward, so also the early expressions of the voice express 
the nutritive properties of objects in which the interjectional- 
nominal element is present though undifferentiated, hence it is 
possible, as observers have done, to classify these as nouns or 
as interjections. Or, again, the verbal element may be promi- 
nent in the form of a wash or gesture. This view is further 
strengthened by the studies of philologists who have studied 
the evolution of parts of speech in the race. Professor Whit- 
ney says: "The interjections are not in the same and proper 
sense parts of speech; they are, rather, analogous with those 
all-comprehending signs out of which the rest have come by 
evolution. A typical interjection is the mere spontaneous 
utterance of a feeling, capable of being paraphrased into a good 
set expression for what it intimates; thus, an ah! or an oh! 
may mean, according to its tone, 'I am hurt,' or 'I am 
pleased.'" Or, the infant may say, "Mum," "lamhungry;" 
"bup," "I want some bread and butter." It is the same psy- 
chological fact that takes place when the African negro cries 
out in fear or wouder, "Mama! Mama!": according to Lindley 
Murry, he is simply calling, grown up baby as he is, for his 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 21 

mother; or the Indian of Upper California who, in an expres- 
sion of pain, cries, "Ana!" (mother). These interjectional 
forms are, psychologically speaking, interjectional-nominal or 
interjectional-verbal or interjectional-nominal-adjectival- verbal, 
etc, Ament (i, p. 163) has classified the early sentence-words 
of the child which he observed and found that the different 
categories of language are present in embryo in the sentence- 
words which the child uses. Thus, the child pointed and said: 

Weg! VVeg! (Gehe weg!) Go away! Interjectional. 

Medi! (Siehe das Madchen!) See the girl! .... Substantive. 

^«/.^ (Babette ist brav!) Babette is brave! Adjective. 

Duduf (Was thust du?) What are you doing ? . . Pronominal. 
Waschen (Babette thut waschen) Babette is washing. Verbal- 
Infinitive. 

Knidi (Knie dich) kneel Verbal-Imperative. 

Auf (Das ist auf) That is up Adverbial. 

Mid (Ich will mit dir) I want to go with you. . Prepositional. 
Children in whom the mimetic impulse is less strong often 
take a rest at this stage of development, when they have 
learned to make their wants known by the sentence-word. 
This serves as a practice stage of motor-co-ordinations and thus 
prepares for the more complex period about to come. Mrs. 
Moore observed that from the fifty-second to the eighty-second 
weeks, words were added very slowly to the vocabulary. 
Though the child talked a great deal, he made a few words, 
chiefly nouns. After the eighty-second week, the acquisition 
of nouns proceeded at a rapid rate. The studies of children's 
vocabularies will show that the ' ' parts of speech ' ' which first 
become differentiated are generally substantive; — names of arti- 
cles of food, members of the family, pets, parts of the body, 
etc.; but these are not isolated as was shown above; on the con- 
trary, they are combined with the indicative gestures which ex- 
press the verbal idea. "The objects," says Mrs. Hall, "are 
seen as a whole without regard to either qualities or motion ; 
hence the early appearance (45th wk. ) and great preponderance 
of nouns. Action being the most attractive feature of an ob- 
ject, that was noticed next in order, and verbs were introduced 
to express it (48th wk.)." Then next in order there appear 
the adjectives and adverbs; later, pronouns, prepositions, and 
finally conjunctions. 

(2) Sentence Without Inflections. 

The looseness with which the child's early words are thrown 
together indicates something of the thought structure, — the 
chaotic confusion and often bewilderment which exist in the 
child's mind. The age at which the first sentence appears 
varies considerably, but in general it is between the eighteenth 

3 



22 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

and twentieth months. The first attempt at sentence building 
consists frequently of compounding substantives, or combining 
a substantive with a verb or an adjective, both words expres- 
ing a vivid experience to the child. H., twenty-four months, 
when riding in the cars, was suddenly thrown by the stopping 
of the train. She looked confused and was told that "the car 
stops;" immediately the child picked up the expression, car 
dops. She had used words before for several months, but this 
was the first attempt at sentence building. Sully observed the 
first sentence, Papa no (Papa's nose). In case the sentence 
consists of a substantive and a verb, the verb is generally in 
the imperative form; as observed by Sully "Mamma tie." 
(Tie gloves.) There is no definitely assigned order of the 
words. Humphrey (6ia, p. 12) observed that order was 
quite immaterial, and the child might say, "Julia broke doll," 
or " Julia doll broke," or "Broke doll Julia." These are the 
mountain peaks of language which make their appearance in 
the mist, and indicate the dawn of growing intelligence. The 
negative expressions of children further illustrate sentence 
structure. There is a peculiar form of expression in which the 
child expresses a thought in the form of an indicative or an 
exclamatory sentence; and then tacks on the negative; as, 
^'Henny go Papa — No.'' (Can Helen go with Papa ? No.) 
She asked the question and answered it without a pause. An- 
other form of spontaneous sentence has been observed by Pro- 
fessor Sully (78, p. 175) which is characteristic of this early 
period in which there is an antithesis under the form of two 
balanced statements. The child opposes an afl&rmative to a 
negative statement as a means of bringing out the fuller mean- 
ing of the former. Sully gives the following example: Boy C. 
would say, ''This-a-nice- bow-wow, — not-nasty bow-wow." In 
this case the habitual form of sentence is followed in rapid suc- 
cession by another, a negative, situation of which the child 
was not conscious at first. One may even observe a look of 
disappointment with the negative which was not present in the 
mind during the first statement. "This use of the negative 
statement by waj'^ of, or opposition to, an afl&rmative," says 
Professor Sully, "grew in the case of one child, aged two years 
and two months, into a habit of description by negatives. ' ' 

M., 23 months. Begins to put words together. Coffee-bean, which 
before was called "bean," now becomes "ka-boinen." 

M., '' Papa-a-ng-i bich.^'' "Papa schreibt Briefe." (Papa writes 
letters.) 

"Olol-Job-a — Rudi — Siki — haja" "Ololand Job are bad (names); 
Rudi and Siki good." 

M., II months. The first sentence. Papa gone, though first repeated 
after his mother, was from that time used independently. 

M., 14 months. Papa — shoe — black-box. (Papa blacks his shoes on 
that box.) 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 23 

M., 16 mouths. Pony — horsie—pony ; boy — walk — Anna — walk — 
pony. (Albert had a ride with a pony, a little horse, boy and Anna 
walked; but Albert had the pouy.) 

M., 17 months. Mamtna — hand — in — the — water. 

F., 21^ months. There is now a distinct advance in constructive 
power. Substantives and adjectives are freely put together. Kabz — 
dati — klatn — klin — . (Cab's dirty, perambulator clean.) 

M., 15th month. "■'Papa gone.'" " Ama rsh?" (Grandma, where 
is she?) '■'Man — cow.'''' (a man on a horse) ^' Mantnta — a — tnan — bot- 
tle!''' (Mamma, see the man with bottles!) ''Sit down! " (You sit 
down) "■Brush — hair.''' (Brush my hair.) 

M., II mouths. "■ Papn — tn." (The bread is gone.) 

M., 17 months. The child has associated ot with hot substances, a 
something steaming. A month later, he was placed before Guildo's 
Anrora, and exclaimed "ot." He meant the clouds which, in his 
metaphorical mind, represented steam. 

F., 20 months. ''Lulu — dai.^' (Ivulu ist da.) " Lili — alden.'^ 
(Willie halte mich.) 

"Run — aivay — tnan." (The man runs away.) 

"Out — pull — baby— pecs.'" (Baby pulls or will pull out the spec- 
tacles.) 

M., 3rd year. "\Mimi atta teppa pappa oi." (The milk has gone 
on the carpet, and papa said ' Fie.') 

F., 16 months. " Mos — ky — baby — shee." Shouted with joy at go- 
ing out to see the moon. 

M., 15 months. "Blow — lady — doivn— floor ." (The wind blew 
down a picture.) 

"Mamma — broom — corner — sweep." (Saw a broom in the corner.) 

F., 17 months. "Mama — welche — appelchen — kaufen." (Did mama 
buy apple for Alec?) 

M., 26 months. "Fallen — tuhl, bein — anna — ans." (Fell against 
the chair leg upon which Anna sat.) 

F., "Baby-have — papa [^pepper') no." 

French child. "Papa — nan." (It is not Papa.) 

3rd year. " N (his own name) go in water, no." 

F. " Bov (the name of her cat) dot tail; poor Babba dot no tail," 
proceeding to search for a tail under her skirts. 

(3) The Sentences with Inflections. 

The inflected forms of the sentence appear in the same re- 
curring sequence that obtained in the differentiation of the 
parts of speech. lyindner's boy expressed plural number first 
during the 22d month. A month later he distinguished be- 
tween zzvei and viele (two and many). Mrs. Hall (34) ob- 
served the idea of number as early as the fifteenth month, and 
Ament (i, p. 166) observed distinctions in gender, number, 
and case as early as the twentieth month; in nouns and pro- 
nouns, as early as the eighteenth month, when the child spoke 
of herself in terms of the second person, du (you), and two 
weeks later she substituted the correct form, ich (I). In gain- 
ing command of this phase of the mother-tongue, one thing, 
says Professor Sully (78, p. 176), is clear, — "the child's in- 
stinct is to simplify our forms, to get rid of irregularities." 
Striking examples of this are found in the use of the hetero- 



24 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

geneous assemblages of dififerent verb forms and in the use of 
the personal pronouns. The child reasons by analogy and the 
direction of the error lies often in being logically consistent. 
The weak form is often transformed to the strong form of verbs. 
The child says scram for screamed, splat or sphd for split. Or 
the change may be the reverse, and say eated for ate, seed for 
saw; or it may join an adverb to a verb — in place oi fell down, 
say fall dozuned. 

The transition which takes place in a child in passing from 
the impersonal state, when it is simply "baby," to the state in 
which it speaks of itself as /, my, and mi7ie, has been recog- 
nized by psychologists as the time when there is "a real ad- 
vance towards the true self-consciousness." The child begins 
to use the personal pronouns during the first half of the third 
year. Preyer observed it during the 25th months; Pollock, 
during the 26th; Schultze, during the 19th; and Ament, dur- 
ing the 2ist month. Rzesnitzek (68, p. 32) has observed that 
the child uses the possessive mJ7ie first. Your is often substi- 
tuted in place of the object itself, or to denote possession, as 
yotir bed. Graf von Pfeil (63, p. 5) maintains — and this has 
been supported by other observations — that the child first 
masters the pronouns denoting second person, then those de- 
noting third person, and last of all those denoting first person. 

Early Inflected Sentences. 

M., 22 months. " There goes two little boys.'" " Warren's apple is 
good." " Mamtna sit down, rubbers on." 

F., 26 months. "^ hard saucer." 

F., 32 months. " That tastes more better good." 

F. " Roc/t my to sleep." '' Yes I are." '' Papa do." The child is 
asked, "Are you good now?" He answers, " Yes I are." 

F., 2X 3'ears. ''Papa eated dinnie." 

M., 25 months. "Cutis." (Es ist gut. It is good.) " Bald kont- 
men." Clch komme bald. I will come soon.) 

M., 26 months. " Ich fortgagen Fliege." (I will drive away the 
fly.) " Eiji bissel (weuig) Wasser wollt ich." (I want a little water.) 

M., 28 months. " Bitte, ich eine Plaume geben." (Please give me 
a plum.) 

F., 4 years. *' Die {Sie) hat rnich nass gemacht." (She has made 
me wet. ) " Dem Papa ihr Buch auf der Mama seinen Platz gelecht." 

M., 29 months. The child began suddenly, of his own accord, to 
count his nine-pins, putting them in a row, saying with each one, 
" eins/ eins!" and later, " eins, noch eins, noch eins." (one more.) 

F., 33 months. " Was fUr hubsen Rock hast du! " (What a hand- 
some coat you have!) 

M., " What Pm going to do?" (What are you going to do?) 

M., 34 mos. " No two Hatoes." (Only one potato left.) 

M. , 3 years. ' ' Where did you been ?" " Did you zuent down street f ' 
" Look at he! " " She hurt she finger." " What time it is ? " 

F., 4 years. " What did her say ?" 



the language interest of children. 25 

4 Summary and Pedagogical Deductions. 

We have now traced the order of unfolding of the Language 
Interest in children through the first period, and have seen 
that a child during this period employs three different lan- 
guages before it settles down to adopt the language of its 
mother: (i) The primitive language of the species consisting 
of sounds and signs — This form is purely instinctive, and serves 
to express the physical needs, and the lower order of emotional 
states. (2) The interjectional, onomatopoetic language, which 
consists of interjection and onomatopoetic reduplications. In 
this form, the initial impulse of expression is strengthened by 
the awakening of the impulse of imitation. (3) The mother- 
tongue, with its differentiated articulations and inflected forms. 
We have seen that the language parallels the physical devel- 
opment in its periods of rest and intensity. An arrest of phy- 
sical development or a prolonged physical strain may cause an 
arrest of the language development. We have also seen that 
the fundamental impulses upon which the development rests 
— the instinct of expression and the impulse of imitation — cul- 
minate during the second and third years of life, and give rise 
to the primary language interest. Let us now turn to some of 
the problems which present themselves: first, problems of de- 
velopment; and second, problems of training. 

If we turn to the records of those philologists who have ob- 
served the isolated languages which have suffered least by con- 
tact or by alterations in condition of culture in what Dr. Brinton 
(8, p. 392) calls the "baby -talk of the race;" and compare 
with these the records of the development of child-language in 
its evolution of sound utterances, of combining words into sen- 
tences, of vocalic mutation, of intonation, and of placement, 
all of which are steps indicative of the high form of specializa- 
tion of our language; and add to these the differentiation of 
the parts of speech with their highly inflected forms, we find 
many striking examples in favor of the recapitulation theory. 
This view also places us in a position to appreciate, in a meas- 
ure, the task in which the child accomplishes in a brief period 
of two years in learning to express its thoughts by means 
of this exceedingly complex form of reaction. 

The child's early utterances abound in gutterals, the un- 
modified expulsion of breath which is characteristic of primitive 
races. But when it begins to imitate the speech movements of 
its environment, we at once see the operation of Schultze's law 
in the development of labials and dentals. Again, if we turn 
to the growth of the sentence, we see a similar conflict, which 
in precocious children very often leads to confusion and arrested 
development. But in spite of the fact that the child lives in a 
highly inflected language, its early words follow the line of the 



26 THE I.ANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

race impulse, and are onomatopoetic and reduplications. Dr. 
Brinton (7, p. 308), Dr. Wilson, Dr. Wallace, and others have 
shown that the words ma of the Malay, mamma of the Ro- 
mans, ma of the Hindoo, naa of the Tahalics, and amama of 
the Esquimaux, bear a relation to the anne, mama, bababa, and 
ma of the nursery, and have a functional similarity. The sen- 
tence among the Chinese, Professor Sayce (70, p. 137) tells 
us, is summed up by a single word. The mind, he says, has 
not yet clearly marked off its several parts and analyzed what 
we may call the early communism of speech. In many of the 
languages of the American Indians, the substantives and verbs 
are undifferentiated. Thus, Dr. Brinton says, 7iorth in the lan- 
guage of the Senecas is the sun never goes there, and this state- 
ment may be used as substantive, adjective, or verbal; in such 
cases the statement is expressed as one undifferentiated vocable. 

These illustrations are sufficient to show the line of develop- 
ment for the child, and if development is to proceed normally, 
the child 7nust be at every stage of development — a fact which 
Froebel recognized over a half century ago — wholly what this 
stage calls for. 

When we turn to the matter of training during this first 
period, we find two classes of parents. There are those who, 
as the reports and returns show, belong to the more ambitious, 
and believe in putting the infants through a carefully planned 
course of voice culture. One observer reports that she took 
the infant of ten months, placed it upon her knee, and daily 
pronounced a certain number of sounds for the child to imitate 
in order to develop a soft and musical tone of voice. Another 
mother reports a typical case when she said: "Olive began to 
talk at seven months — she could say man}'^ words at eleven 
months. She was kept talking on all occasions, because she 
was thought to be a phenomenal infant. At last nature re- 
belled, and for one-half year she never attempted to say a word; 
when she began to talk again, the liquid baby prattle had 
grown harsh and awkward. Papa, one of the first words she 
ever said, became baba at two years of age; and not until she 
was five could she sound k and 7 in kitty and fack as when she 
was a mere baby. Physicians who examined her at the age of 
four said the vocal organs had been overtaxed and were injured 
in consequence. She picked up the sounds gradually; but the 
sounds which she had said earliest were hardest to regain. ' ' 
Another mother is reported to have addressed her son, aged 
twelve months, thus: "It is your duty to go to sleep when I tell 
you that the time has arrived. So, my son, you will lie still." 
In all seriousness she was exceedingly distressed when the sou 
said, "Thaw a thweet butterpy thucking thugar out of a 
power. ' ' In the second class of mothers, there are those of 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 27 

penetrating sympathetics, on whom the wandering eyes of the 
infant first steady, for whom the vacant face first breaks into a 
smile, and to whom the first response of crooning and nonsense 
syllables have a meaning of their own. It is this class who 
instinctively appeal to nature's methods. When a child fails 
to catch the radical sound of a word, it is these weak parents, 
says Dr. von Martius, "who, instead of accustoming it to pro- 
nounce the word correctly, will yield, perhaps, themselves and 
adopt the language of the child," which gives rise to "baby- 
talk." This universal form of language has been generally 
condemned. Dr. Gutzmann believes, "there is much sinning 
in this respect by adult persons constantly indulging in so- 
called "baby-talk" with children. Later, when the child goes 
to school and begins to notice that it is lacking in this respect, 
it becomes the object of mockery by other children; and this 
inheritance from the nursery may have an injurious effect on 
its speech, and even on its character and its future life." 
Specimens of modern ' 'baby-talk' ' give proof of cases of arrested 
speech development without doubt due to this practice. 

Boy, 3 years. "No-no nee! Tee-tee Weewie no no go out of houzie 
if5'ounee." ("Do not cry! Little Willie will not go out of the house 
if 5'ou cry." ) "The tee-tee bow-wow nees." ("The little dog cries.") 

Boy, 4 years. "Ikky haw a 'icley ha ha hitchey — hitchey 'yong 'le 
t'eet an' hoppy on a po-po 'ickle waggy." 

Boy, 2 years. "Thaw a thweet little butterpy thucking thugar out 
of a power." ("Saw a sweet little butterfly sucking sugar out of a 
flower.") 

Boy, 6 years. "Mamma 'panked I." 

Boy, 4 years. Called a cow "hoony," a dog "waggy," a horse a 
"ha-ha," a nut a "c'acker," his nurse "wow-wow," a banana a 
"parson." 

Girl, 2]/^ years, "Me ee 00." ("I see you.") "Ou ah en dahi." 
("You are in dressing.") 

No psychological study of "baby-talk" has been made of 
which we are aware, and we need more observations to estab- 
lish its function. If the essay of John Fiske on the lyengthened 
Period of Infancy has any validity, then the mothers who are 
unduly hastening the development in the language of infants 
are "sinning" against the laws of growth in forcing the higher 
forms of language before the lower are organized, as the second 
class is "sinning" in causing the lower forms of language to 
survive "as pensioners of the soul" beyond the normal time, 
thus producing arrested speech development. 

The proper training lies between these two extreme points. 
Many observers speak in favor of "natural baby-talk," or the 
use of diminutives, since this form is an appeal to nature's 
methods and instinctively places the mother in sympathetic 
relation within the range of the child's language experience. 
The diminutives so common in child and primitive languages 



28 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

follow the law of reduplications, and they are also the expres- 
sions of the tenderest emotions. Both the golden age of child- 
hood, and the golden age of love exercise a remarkable influence 
upon language in the use of diminutives, and friends sometimes 
use this form of speech toward each other. "Mothers in talk- 
ing to their children, sometimes friends in talking to each 
other," says Montegazza, "thus lessen themselves in a delicate 
and generous manner, in order that they may embrace and be 
absorbed in the circle of the creature they love." 

If, then, the use of diminutives is a natural form of expres- 
sion, as it appears to be, upon which the vocal organs are to 
practice for the more difl&cult combinations of sounds which 
are to be sloughed off when the step has been taken; or if that 
form of language expresses the emotional state better than any 
other, its importance from a psychological point of view as an 
element in training must not be neglected. 

Summary. 

1. Keep the child in a healthy physical condition. 

2. Give freedom to the movements of the organs of respira- 
tion. 

3. Keep the child in a sympathetic frame of mind that its 
impulse to imitate may be at its best, that is, unconscious, and 
never call attention to errors. 

4. Beyond this, science has but a single suggestion: "Let 
the child alone, and set it a good example' ' in clear and dis- 
tinct articulation, in a rich language environment. The in- 
stinct of expression and of imitation will do the rest. 

II. THE PERIOD OF CHILDHOOD. 

The second period of the language interest extends approxi- 
mately from the third to the eleventh or twelfth years. Ob- 
servers have generally recognized two quite distinct periods: 
first, a period of continued rapid growth from three to seven; 
and second, a period of rest and re-adjustment from seven to 
eleven or twelve. 

I. The Period of Continued Rapid Growth. 

According to Wundt's general law of growth (91, p. 242), 
this period arises in the elements of the earlier one, and de- 
velops gradually into a new creation in comparison to it. The 
rhythmic, the spontaneous, and voluntary expressions possess 
each their peculiar forms. 

Physical growth continues at a rapid rate, likewise the brain 
in weight and organization (Betz, Flechsig). The senses are 
especially alert. The vocal organs, according to Garbini (24, 
p. 53), grow during the third year to cause a differentiation of 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHII^DREN. 29 

the two registers, the tones become more individualized, and 
the first sex diflferences appear. From the third to the sixth 
years there is a well marked vocal extension of four tones for 
girls and five for boys. 

Psychologically, this is a period of peculiarly intense activity, 
which, Sikorsky (75, p. 53) says, is characterized by a general 
development of all the activities of the soul; it is essentially a 
period of mental expansion when color, form, number, and 
space relations begin to dawn. The soul extends its bounda- 
ries from the narrower, individual self to a larger, more social 
self. The child has become conscious of its own body, and is 
able to distinguish between the mine and the not mme. But 
this is also a period when the external impressions tend to 
unify the processes of the emotions, intellect, and will into a 
personality, the worth of which, says Sikorsk}^, does not de- 
pend upon the extension and strength of the single manifesta- 
tions of the soul, but much more upon the harmonious fusion 
of all. The child's mind, like a sponge, is always thirsty. 
And one of the earliest symptoms of this, the vegetative period 
of the soul, as shown by the study of Curiosity and hiterest 
(33), is in seeking the acquaintance of everything and every- 
body. "Curiosity is the apparent, now partial, now dominant, 
motive in many fields." So great is this curiosity to see things 
that it even leads to truancy and runaway, as shown by Kline. 
In the field of language, this thirsting of the soul for life and 
experience is apparent, first, in the dawn of the Questioning 
Age; and, second, in the interest shown in myths, fairy tales, 
stories, etc. 

( I ) The Questioning Age. 

This period begins gradually during the third year of life. 
Pollock observed the first question at twenty-three months; 
Preyer, at twenty-eight; Ivindner, at twenty-six; and the writer 
observed the first question at twenty-five months. But the 
true age of inquisitiveness when question after question is fired 
off. says Professor Sully (78, p. 75), with wondrous rapidity, 
and pertinacity seems to be ushered in with the fourth year. 
Out of a total number of 1,227 cases of curiosity in children re- 
ported by Drs. Hall and Smith (33), 44.41% attempted to sat- 
isfy their mental longings by asking questions. The early and 
simpler forms of questions are questions of fact, of substance, 
action and place. What f Where f In these may be seen the 
blending of the child's observation and half-conscious process 
of reflection, and it turns to adults to satisfy the cravings of its 
mind. One observer states that while out in the field with a 
four year old boy he missed a butterfly which he was attempt- 
ing to catch, whereupon the child asked, " Where is the but- 



30 THE IvANGUAGB INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

terfly gone to, uncle ? " He answered, " I don't know." The 
child, looking somewhat crestfallen, said, "I thought, uncle, 
you knew everything." The child soon becomes conscious of 
the fact that objects have names, and every member of the 
family has its individual name, and consequently it immediately 
sets about to inquire the names of every individual object about 
it. Girl, 2yi years. "What's this dog's name?" "What's 
this book's name?" "What's this pencil's name?" One feat- 
ure in this fact-gleaming kind of question, says Sully (78, p. 
76), is the great store which the child sets by the name of a 
thing. The naming of predominants (agents, objects or ac- 
tions) is, according to Lloyd Morgan, the first great step of 
independent life in the course of mental evolution. Here is 
seen the germ of the child's analysis which isolates the action 
and object thus named and causes it to float off by its sign. 
"Body and mind, ' ' says Morgan, "became separable in thought; 
the self was differentiated from the not-self; the mind was 
turned inwards upon itself through the isolation of its vary- 
ing phases." A sign, to use Sir William Hamilton's phrase, 
is necessary to give stability to intellectual progress. The 
second form of questions is directed toward the reason and 
cause of things — the "why?" This form develops naturally 
out of the earlier; for to give the "what?" of a thing — that is, 
its connections — is to give the "why?" — that is, its mode of 
production, its use and purpose; and it is the beginning of 
the soul's groping its way backward to find the origin of things. 
The "why?" says Sully (78, p. 80) takes on a more special 
meaning when the idea of purpose becomes clear. And here 
the anthropomorphic attitude appears; when the child learns 
that his own actions are controlled by a desire to get or to avoid 
something, the idea of the result of an action precedes and de- 
termines the action. 

Early Forms of Questions. 

F., 2]i years. "What's that?" "What's in there?" "Where's mam- 
ma?" "What's mamma doing?" "What's the matter, mamma?" 
"What's this book's name?" "What's that pencil's name?" "Was it 
raining in the night?" "Will it rain this night?" "Is that papa's old 
hat?" "Is the moon out there?" 

M. "What is this flower?" "What is this insect?" 
M., 28 months. "Where is Mima?" "Where is ball?" 
M., 26 months. "Can I eat those?" was asked when he saw some fruit 
which had been brought from the garden. Where is his first definite 
interrogative. 

F., 29 months. While sitting upon the couch, she asked, "Where 
is the lady-bug?" (Having seen a "lady-bug" upon the window a week 
previous) Answer: "I suppose it has gone into its hole." "Where's 
the man-bug?" "Where's the boy-bug?" "Where's the girl-bug?" 
"Where's the stove-bug?" 
M., 3% years. "What does frogs eat, and mice, and birds, and but- 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 3 1 

terflies? and what does they do? and what is their names? What is all 
their house's names? what does they call their streets and places?" 
Since then he has flooded us with innumerable questions, and mostly 
unanswerable. "What holds the stars up?" "Where does the sun go 
to?" Answer: "God." "Who is God?" "Will God be along here 
pretty soon?" 

F. "Why does it rain?" "Why is there summer and winter?" 
"Why is Flossie's hair curly?" "Why isn't it always sunshine?" 

M., 34 months. The word why appeared first in a question. "Why 
go home? I don't want to go home." "Why is the wood cut?" "Why 
do you clean the flower pots?" "How is that done?" 

F., 4 years. "Where does all that I eat go to?" 

F., 18 years. I remember as a child asking, "Why is a table called 
a table and not called cheese?" 

F., 18 years. I was five years old when I went to stay with a blind 
uncle in the country. The next morning after my arrival he took me 
to the Post Ofiice. It was then I began to see things and to ask ques- 
tions. "How can you see where to go?" "What made you blind?" 
"Why are farm houses painted white?" "What will the dog do if the 
cow looks at it?" "Why are farmer's fingers so fat?" 

M., 3 >^ years. "Who made papa poorly?" "Is this a poorly gen- 
tleman?" "No." "Is that a well gentleman?" "Yes." "Then who 
made him well?" 

F., 4th year. L. saw a balloon (toy) growing smaller from day to 
day. She said, "That balloon is growing smaller. The air is going 
out." She heard about the children's being confirmed, and asked? 
"Where are they confirmed? here? here?" pointing to different parts of 
her body, "Is the pastor confirmed as well?" 

F., 2]/^ years. Questions of time relation: "Is it morning now?" 
"When is it noon?" 

F. As a child, finding a hole in my shoe, I asked my father the fol- 
lowing questions: "What made the laole?" He answered, "Why, be- 
cause the walk is hard." "What made it hard?" "The tar." "What's 
tar?" "Something to make walks with." "What do they make walks 
with it for?" "For us to walk on." "What do we walk on them 
for?' ' My father was now getting impatient, so he told me it was time 
for me to go to bed. 

(2) Interest in Rhymes, Myths and Stories, 

Another evidence of the activity of the child's mind is 
seen in the intense pleasure derived from stories, rhymes, or 
melodies which are told to it. Professor Jegi (43, p. 243) re- 
ports that between the nineteenth and twentieth months Mother 
Goose had been read through and through scores of times. 
Whenever the child asked for a .story, her wish was granted, 
and many of the rhymes and jingles could be repeated by her 
without mistake. She even repeated them with book in hand 
to other children. Mrs. Hogan (39, p. 84) records that during 
the third year her boy asked her to sing "Moller Goose — fol-la- 
three-birds." "I think," says Mrs. Hogan, "I sang it over 
at least two dozen times. He kept repeating, 'More!' and 
kept time with his finger, sometimes singing with me. When 
he wants me to sing, he specifies what he wants. ' ' One hun- 
dred seventy-five students sent returns based upon observation 



32 THE I.ANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

and reminiscence in answer to the question, "When are signs 
of an interest in Mother Goose melodies, rhymes, or fairy stories 
first noticed?" All, without an exception, report a keen in- 
terest in children beginning during the third j'ear, and growing 
in intensity with age. The interest, according to these returns, 
centres in Mother Goose melodies, rhymes and jingles in which 
there is movement and dramatic effect during the earlier years, 
and passes into the counting-out rhymes, fairy tales, and myths 
which predominate during the years from five to nine. The 
stories most preferred were Little Red Riding Hood, Little 
Golden Hair, Cinderella, Jack a7id the Bea7i Stalk, Jack the Giant 
Killer, Alice in Wonderland, and stories of Santa Claus. That 
there is a real passion of the soul for myths and stories is fur- 
ther shown in children who have been left to themselves a great 
deal. Under such conditions, alone with Nature, they have 
shown a myth-making impulse. Monteith (56, p. 208) has set 
down the record of a child three years of age in his family, 
which illustrates this passion. "It was on the bluffs of the 
Mississippi River," says Mr. Monteith, "she had no companions 
of her own age, and was allowed to ramble about the grounds 
alone. She was seen to create a fairy world for herself. An 
old stump was invested with an evil spirit named Spunt, 
another stump was the sanctuary of a similar spirit, Nessma7i. 
In a rock-pine cone was embodied the friendly spirit Rock-pine. 
At different trees and clusters of shrubs she located the fairy 
people, all known by names of her own creation, — Mrs. Knick- 
erboc, Mrs. Purple, Mrs. Chary, Mrs. Yellow, and her deceitful 
sou Yelly Yellow. These people transgressed the laws of 
Nature with utmost license, and were daily brought into dra- 
matic action. Conversation was put into their mouths, and 
incidents, situations, and conflicts created for them. ' ' Another 
observer in Babyhood states (11, p. 320) that her boy never 
tended or caressed his doll. She was more like a puppet than 
a doll to him — simply a subject for his imagination to work 
upon ; and his manner of playing with her was generally to leave 
her alone and untouched, and simply talk about her. "Miss 
Rose," as the doll was called, "has committed every possible 
childish fault and suffered every possible punishment," says 
the mother; "she has steeped herself in crime of a more serious 
nature, such as murder and arson; she has visited foreign coun- 
tries; she has been rescued from burning houses; she has mar- 
ried many times; she has been in prison; she has been an 
actress, and even a cannibal. She lives in a certain Pigtown- 
ville where most of her adventures occur." 

The imagination of children has carried them farther than 
this. Mr. John Fiske reports a boy four years old who con- 
ceived the snowy clouds of noonday as white robes of angels 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 33 

hung Up to dry; and a girl who asked whether she must take 
a balloon and go to the horizon and climb up to the sky to 
reach the place where God lives. Another observer states that 
his boy three years old wanted to climb to the sky, break a 
hole through, and sit in God's lap. 

Interest in Stories. 

F., 19 years. As far back as I can remember, I have always had a 
great love for story-telling. When about three years old, I lived near 
a large pine wood. It was my great delight to have my older sister 
take me into the wood, on summer days, and tell me stories. She 
always had something new to tell me. After once hearing them, I 
could repeat them, and it delighted me to think about them. 

F., 20 years. When a little girl, I could sit and listen for hours to 
the stories mamma told me every evening. Sometimes it was a nursery 
rhyme, sometimes a story of the Christ Child. It was a severe pun- 
ishment to have her refuse to tell it when I had been naughty during 
the day. 

F., 20 years. When a little child I was very imaginative, but did 
not use my imagination to any great extent in story-telling. I used it 
to protect myself from some punishment or trouble. 

F., 18 years. When I heard the szory oi Jack the Giant Killer,! 
thought it was a beautiful story. I thought the giants as big as trees, 
and believed that they still lived in forests. 

F., 21 years. One Christmas I received a large doll. The same day 
my playmate showed me her doll. I said, "Oh! my doll is five times 
larger." The truth of it was that my doll was but a very little larger, 
only it seemed larger. 

F., 19 years. When a child, I saw a small grass snake. I ran into 
the house and said that there was a snake as big as a broom. 

F., 20 years. When small I helped my brother kill a baby snake. 
I told that we had killed a great big striped adder. I did not feel as 
though I was lying. It did seem large to me. 

F. At five. Mother Goose was my delight. Its ridiculousness and 
its jingle strongly appealed to me. There is nothing little to a child. 
My great troubles could not easily be pitied or kissed away; but give 
me Mother Goose's cheery logic, and I could send them off myself in 
womanly fashion. 

F. When a little girl, I had but few companions. This, however, 
was of little consequence, as I had a group of five or six imaginary 
playmates. These were very distinct individuals with names, as Vio- 
let and Kate, and with decided personal characteristics. We played 
all sorts of games and roamed all over the grounds together. I never 
thought of telling any one about them; they seemed a part of my own 
individual world which I could not transfer to others understand- 
ingly. 

F. The most vivid memory of anything as a child is of a continu- 
ous story. When the shades were partly drawn, my friend and I 
would sit down on the floor and tell our story. We took turns, trying 
to divide the time equally, and then each one tried to out-rival the 
other by prophecies of the beautiful things that were going to be ours 
when we grew up to be princesses. 

(3) Interest in Words. 

Again the language interest may be seen during this period 
by the interest in new words — a continuation of the imitative 



34 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

sound impulse of the earlier period. As Miss Williams (85, 
p. 274), Mr. Conradi (18, p. 359), and others have shown, 
children delight to use new words, and words of peculiar 
sounds. " Whenever at six or seven," says Miss Williams, 
"my niece, Helen, heard a word that attracted her attention, 
she used to sa^^ it softly to herself many times. Thus, after 
practicing the word diarrhoea, I heard her say to one of her 
dolls: "Come here, Diarrhoea, my dear." On another occa- 
sion, she told me that her dolls had two gods, Diphtheria and 
Diarrhcsa. Sometimes she would pour forth a steady stream of 
words, for the most part nonsense, lasting for an hour or more. 
This charm was due to the pleasure she derived from the 
sound and the act of speaking. Such words as Sheherezade, 
Badrul, Boudoin, Marie Antoinette, Adelaide, appeared to give 
her special pleasure." The same fact is seen in the case of 
Professor Stumpfs boy aged five years (77, p. 419). He had 
received a set of lettered blocks containing both small and cap- 
itals in both German and English script. He arranged these 
into families, giving to each a family name. Thus, Z, B, and 
g were called "Turn-family" (Dreh-F);p, "Tail-family;" M, 
"Nice-family" (SchonF);H, "Stork-family;" etc. He had 
about thirty different families which he retained for three 
months, when the passion was diverted. Soon after, the child 
became interested in counting, and numbers, even the addition, 
subtraction and multiplication of numbers became of such ab- 
sorbing interest that he made simple problems involving these 
operations, and solved them correctly. Another form of the 
interest in symbol forms is reported by Margaret C. Whiting; 
when about eight years old, she began to think the numerals 
as individuals and not as abstract symbols. /, 2, and j 
were children. 4. was a woman, etc. Dr. Krohn, Galton, 
President Hall, President Jordan (44, p. 36) and Miss Calkins 
(10, p. 439) have reported many cases of color association with 
letters, words, and sounds with names of persons, months of 
the year, and days of the week. After consulting five hundred 
and twenty-five students. Miss Calkins concludes that "it is at 
least certain, as the table shows, that almost all color associa- 
tions and forms date back to childhood." 

Another illustration, which shows the peculiar form that the 
interest in words may take, is reported by Fannie E. Wolf (89, 
p. 141) in the case of a seven year old boy who had written a 
dictionary containing two hundred and fifteen words. The 
boy had spent two years in a kindergarten, but had had no 
suggestion: The idea, it is said, as well as the work, was en- 
tirely his own, and when completed it was submitted to his 
parents. Of the 215 words contained in the dictionary, 42% 
are nouns, 30% are verbs, 10% are adjectives, 4% are prepo- 



•the language interest of children. 35 

sitions, and the remaining 6% is distributed among conjunc- 
tions, articles, participles, and one abbreviation, /'//. The defi- 
nitions are invariably given in the form of sentences, usually 
including the word defined, and expressive of some action or 
use of the thing. The dictionary is also abundantly illustrated 
where an illustration will serve to convey the image. 

Aunt — is a little insect that is black, creeps around in sand. 

Bell — is something that if you shake it rings. 

Basket — is to so or for papers. 

City — is a place like New York. 

Circle — is a round thing like this (illustration). 

Drum — is like this picture to hit with sticks. 

Fuss — is if you have a quarrel with anybody. 

Kind — is if you give things away, then you are kind. 

In — is if you put egg in a box. 

Vain — is if you are always look in the glass. 

Old — is not new. 

Saw — is if you see something after you saw it. 

Interest in Words. 

F., 7 years. Asked questions: "Which do you like best, Rowena or 
Revena, Gladys or Evelyn?" When answered that Evelyn was a little 
the prettier, she said "I think so, too, because it sounds like Agrael 
playing upon the harp." 

M., 6 years. He arranged lettered blocks into families with family 
names: S, B, ^ was called "turn-family" (Dreh-F); p, "Tail-family" 
(Schwauz-F) ; M, "Nice-famil}'" (Schon-F); N, "Noisy-family" 
(Sans-F); F, "Standin-family" (Stehdrin-F); D, "Einbauch-F;" H, 
"Zweibauch-F;" H, "Stork-family," etc. 

When about seven, I delighted in new words, not so much in using 
them as in saying them over to myself. 

Jordan. There are certain powers possessed by childhood, which, 
grow weak or disappear with advancing age or wisdom. One of these 
is the ability to recognize shades of color in ideas or objects which can 
have no color at all. In my childhood, I always associated the idea of 
color with the letters of the alphabet. The letter /^ always called up 
the idea of greenness. .S" was yellow; A, scarlet; V, D, V, K, W, M, 
P, were blue; O, C, white; /, blue-black; M and P, lead color; and Q 
was almost colorless. 

Dr. Karsten recognized the colors in the various vowel sounds. 

(4) Language Expression and Form. 

If we turn to the side of expression, this period is essentially 
a stage oi spontaneous play upon sounds of words, combinations 
of words, rhymes, jingles; the sentences are often incomplete 
and incoherent, very direct, often omitting the parts which do 
not suggest concrete images. There is an incessant flow of 
words and gestures. Mrs. Trettien set down on February 3rd, 
1904, every word spoken by H., aged two and one-half years, 
during the period of one hour. The child was busy at play 
about the house with dolls and other playthings. During this 
hour which was a typical hour of the day, 2:45 to 3:45 p. m., 
she used 1,068 words in 217 different sentences or exclamations, 



36 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. * 

involving i8o different subjects. Of this number, 49 were 
questions. Some of the sentences were repeated in rapid suc- 
cession six times. 

Mr. Gale (25, p. 102) reports the case of a boy who on the 
i82d day of his third year used a total number of 9,290 words, 
and 479 different words, and another boy who on his second 
birthday spoke 805 different words and a total number of 10,507 
words. In the number of repetitions of a single word, Mr. Gale 
found that one boy used his own name, "Sammy," 1,057 times 
on one day during his third year (as subject, object, and pos- 
sessive, and in place of personal pronouns); and also the case 
of a girl who used her favorite "little" 660 times, "that," 609 
times, and the aggressive ego words, "I," "m.e," and "my," 
970 times in one day. Mr. Sanford Bell (3) also counted the 
words used by his two children, aged 4^ years and 3^ years, 
respectively. The older used 14,996 words; while the younger 
used 15,230 words in one day. He also found that the rate of 
speech was accelerated at times, and retarded at others, like 
the general activity of children. While these results are still 
very unsatisfactory, yet, thej' do, in a measure, mark the 
amount of energy which the child puts into his language 
practice. 

It may be well for kindergarteners to consider this enormous 
activity on the part of the child, and not enforce silence and 
suppression to a point of causing arrested development. 

The child's drawings furnish a good illustration of expression. 
To the child, drawing is a language which follows the line of 
its spontaneous impulse and expresses the child's thoughts re- 
gardless of the way the physical copy appears to the eye. A 
few simple lines are sufl&cient to represent a man or other crea- 
ture. Often there is undue emphasis placed upon some minor 
detail, which momentarily catches the fancy, distorting the 
representation. Another feature which invariably appears 
during this period is the faithful delineation of more than is 
visible in the order of nature. The legs of the traditional man 
are displayed through the nether garments, and if astride a 
horse, the body of a horse does not obscure the view of the 
farther limb. 

The child's spontaneous flow of language is usually very free 
and easy when accompanied by dramatization during this period. 
Its story fabrication knows no license; thus. Sully (78) men- 
tions a boy three and one-half years of age who began the de- 
scription of a dog by laying on a miscellaneous pile of color- 
adjectives, blue, red, green, black, white, and-so-forth. "With 
a similar disregard for verisimilitude and concentration of the 
aim of strong effect, he would pile up the agony in a story, 
relating, for example, how the dog had killed a rabbit 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN, 37 

("bunny"), had his head bitten ofiF, was then drowned, and so 
on, through a whole Iliad of canine calamity." The form of 
expression is, however, direct, definite, using short and simple 
or loosely connected sentences, which emphasize the mountain 
peaks of thought, with the lesser important words entirely 
dropped out, nor does the child miss these words, as Professor 
James has shown. But when listening to a repeated story, the 
child's exacting memory demands full, unvarying details. The 
reality of the story does not as a matter of common observation 
admit of even the slightest change, and a single repetition of a 
verse of several lines is remembered without difficulty. 

H., 2^2 years. Remembered the subjects of ten different pictures by 
a single study of them. 

The spontaneity may also be measured by a somewhat fixed 
cadence which suggests that expression is not merely in re- 
sponse to the sense impressions, but also in response of some- 
thing akin to a deeper poetic feeling. 

F., lyi years. Repeats prayer, — 

" Now lay me dow« t'heap (sleep), 
I pay ye Ivod — hoi (soul) 1' keep, 
I should die, fore I wake, 
Pay ye Lod my hoi la take." 
^•. 2>)i years. Repeats story of Little Red Riding Hood as follows: 
"Are flowers. Red Riding Hood picks. Basket in kitchen, meat, 
wine. Basket carry. Can Wolf come? Wolf is coming. Wolf runs 
Grandmother. Wolf comes into room. Wolf whip. When wolf is 
dead." 

F., 4^ years. 

" The beautiful trees are here, 
And Christmas is everywhere. 
And the birthday will come again. 
Father, mother, and baby saucepan," 

In this rhyme there first appears a deeper emotional^tone 
which clearly shows that the child's life is in rapport with na- 
ture; but the lines close with a nonsense jingle. The same 
child when looking out into a garden of calla lilies in th 
morning sang: 

" The lilies and the lamps are lighted, 
And the moon and stars are shining. 
And the leaves are falling down, 
And the wind is blowing, O, so hard. 
The flowers love the dew. 
The flowers love the wet. 
All the pepper flowers are blowing hard, 
And the lilies are blowing hard, 
And the dew is wet." 

On a rainy morning the same child sang: 

" All the trees are shining, 
And the morning is sitting on the sky, 



38 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

And the dew is coming, is coming, 
And the rain is falling 
Where the sun is gone." 
Boy, 7 years. A poem to his teacher. 

" The donkey, the donkey. 

He put on a white cap. 

The donkey, the donkey. 

He put on a white cuff. 

The dog, the dog, 

He danced a jig, 

The cat, the cat, 

She caught a bird." 

As the child grows older, its ideals change; its play becomes 
more socialized, and the language interest changes as well. 
The rhymes of Mother Goose, of jingles, of Nature myths pass 
on to the counting-out rhymes so common among children. 
Mr. H. Carrington Bolton (5, p. 31) has collected nearly nine 
hundred examples in use among modern civilized and semi- 
civilized races. Of the rhyme beginning, One-ery, two-ery, 
ickery, Ann, he has found thirty variants. Mr. Bolton says, 
"the customs connected with the counting-out, as reported 
from all parts of the world, and even the rhymes themselves, 
have many features w^hich are strikingly similar. The dog- 
gerels are similar in their rhythm, in the rise of numerals, in 
the admixture of gibberish with words of known meaning, and 
in the application to the custom of counting-out." The im- 
portant element in these rhymes which appeals to children is 
the dramatic, a combined effect of voice and muscular expres- 
sion. 

Special Favorite Rhymes of Different Nations. 

American. Scottish. 

Ena, mena, mina, mo, Eatum, peatum, penny pie, 

Catch a nigger by the toe, Babyloni, stickum, stie, 

If he hollars, let him go, Stand you out thereby. 
Ena, mena, mina, mo. 

German. French. 

Ene, bene, dunke, funke, Un, deux, trois, 

Rabe, schnabe, dippi, dappi, Tu ne l^s pas, 

Kase, knappe, Quatre, cinq, six, 

Ulle bulle ros. Va t'en d'ici. 
lb ab aus, 
Du liegst draus. 

Even the more serious poems which children choose at this 
age are those in which the rhythm and life are especially promi- 
nent, as Dr. Wissler (86, p. 523) has shown, children caring 
less for sentiment and thought. The following little rhyme is 
a favorite: 

"Two little kittens one stormy night. 
Began to quarrel and then to fight." 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 39 

When we turn to a further analysis of the material thus far 
presented upon this period, we find that the development of the 
language interest rests upon and can be traced in the growth 
of the personality. With the development of memory, atten- 
tion, and will, the naming impulse gathers up those various 
elements and experiences, more or less consciously, which con- 
stitute the "empirical I" with its individual stream of interests. 
The mind in its rapid growth entirely naive, unfettered by 
convention and tradition, seizes upon the sense-experience 
and appropriates it. Childhood is the age of fancy, dreaming, 
and make-believe. It pushes out into the unknown, as we 
have seen, with questions and longings and builds about its 
meagre stock of knowledge a halo of splendor. In all this, we 
can catch a glimpse of the child's anthropomorphic way of look- 
ing upon the world. Things animate and inanimate are pos- 
sessed of life similar to its own. Nature becomes a great drama 
whose actors are as real as life itself. 

Personification and Dramatization. 

M., 20 months. Conceived a special fondness for the letter IV, ad- 
dressing it thus: " Dear little boy, IV." 

M., 4 years. While tracing letter L happened to slip, changing to 
form an acute angle, thus V. He instantly saw the resemblance to 
the sedentary form, and said, " Oh, he's setting down! " 

F., 2% years. H. impersonated a little baby's manner of walking, 
— "This is the way baby Ruth walks." At the same time she walked 
about clumsily, swaying from side to side. She constantly speaks of 
herself as a little baby, and often creeps on her hands and knees. 

F., 1)4 years. She called a sheep Maina-ba, and a lamb a Ilda-ba, 
having called her smaller brother Ilda. 

F., 4th year. She talks much of God. Says, "I am the dear Lord." 
Shakes the curtain and says, "The dear Lord lets it rain." 

M., 2 years. When caught red-handed in mischief, he would, when 
scolded, unhesitatingly name some one else as the culprit. 

M., 3X years. His father told him if it rained he would not be able 
to go to the circus, for nobody could drive away the rain. The child 
instantly replied, "The Rainer can." When asked who this wonder- 
ful person was, he replied, "A man who lives in the forest, my forest, 
and has to drive the rain away." 

M., 3rd year. The child got hold of some cabbage stalks and 
amused himself with making them represent different persons visiting 
each other. 

F., 2,% years. Covers her face with a veil and says, "Papa, where 
is Lucia? I am not here, I am in Anenau (Argenau)." 

Reported by Miss Calkins : Letter T is generally an ungenerous 
creature. IV is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but mathemati- 
cally angular and ungraceful, j is untrustworthy, fairly good-look- 
ing in personal appearance. 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, 
a friend of L. A'^ seems like a maiden aunt, sister to 31. A is odd and 
stands by himself, an eccentric middle aged man. 

An imaginary John is held responsible for everything objectionable 
in the house. 

F., 6 years. I once happened to overhear a little girl of six talking 
to herself about numbers in this wise : " Two is a dark number; forty 
is a white number. 



40 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

(5) Summary and Deductions. 

There is no problem in the development of the language in- 
terest which has provoked more discussion than this one of the 
myth-making impulse in which the imagination, in its para- 
bles, fables, allegories, fiction, and play, takes such unlicensed 
liberties, even to gross exaggerations and positive prevarica- 
tions. One parent asks, "How far is it advisable to encourage 
an imaginative child ? If encouraged in these things, will it 
not be a fruitful source of telling things that are not true as he 
grows older?" Another says, "I never allow my child to hear 
or tell anything but that which is true." To see the full sig- 
nificance of the myth-makiug impulse, let us take a broader 
view. "The yearning to know," says Major Powell (64, p. ' 
19), "is universal." "In savagery, in barbarism, and in civili- 
zation alike, the mind of man has sought an explanation of 
the changes in nature. 'How' and 'why' are the questions 
asked about these things. They are questions springing from 
the deepest instinct of self-preservation. The movements of 
heavenly bodies, the changes of seasons, the succession of day 
and night, the powers of the air, the majestic mountains, the 
ever flowing rivers, the flight of birds, the gliding of serpents, 
the forms of storm-carved rocks, the growth of trees, the 
blooming of flowers, the mystery of life and death, and in all 
the operations of nature, man's weal and woe are involved. A 
cold wave sweeps from the north and rivers and lakes are fro- 
zen, forests are buried under the snow, and the fierce wind 
almost congeals the life fluid of man himself. At another 
time, the heavens are brass, the clouds come and go with 
mockery of unfulfilled promises of rain, the fierce mid-summer 
sun pours its beams upon the sands, and blasts heated in the 
furnace of the desert sear the vegetation; the luscious fruits 
shrivel before the eyes of famishing men ! ' ' According to 
Major Powell, there are two grand periods of human philoso- 
phy, the mythical and the scientific. In the first, all phe- 
nomena are explained by analogies derived from subjective 
human experiences; in the latter, phenomena are explained as 
orderly successions of events. In the philosophy of the imma- 
turer mind, the objective world is an extension of the subjec- 
tive without a line of demarkation; the outer world is classified 
by their analogies with the subjective. Primitive man meas- 
ures distance by his own pace, time by his own sleep. Noises 
are voices, powers are hands, movements are made afoot. All 
nature is personified. Hartland (36) has summed up the psy- 
chology of myth-making as resting upon, — (i) limitations of 
the individual's experience and knowledge of the facts which 
he sees occurring about him, (2) the mental attitude (curi- 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 41 

osity) which these mysteries of life produce in the mind, and 
(3) the interpretation of nature in terms of his own conscious- 
ness. The subject says Wundt, not only sees his own sensa- 
tions, emotions, and voluntary movements reproduced in the 
objects, but even his momentary affective state is in each case 
especially influential in determining his views of the phenom- 
ena perceived, and in arousing ideas of the relations to his 
own existence. 

Every primitive race has its sagas, ballads, legends, popular 
rhymes, folk-lore, myth, fairy-tales, or stories of its heroes, 
which, according to the German mythologist, Kuhn, began to 
be framed the moment the people consciously recognized the 
existence of such unseen agencies. They were founded on 
visions, dreams, and those vague mental states which fill up so 
large a part of savage life. They were told by professional 
story-tellers to entertain and instruct a listening group, sitting 
about the fires; or by the older men, lying and bragging, after 
the manner of story-tellers, recounting their feats in war or 
the chase. 

Story-telling among civilized people is almost a lost art. 
From the returns there came a response which testified to the 
fact that children enjoy listening to stories in the quiet evening 
hour, and in many cases enjoy repeating the stories to them- 
selves, their fairy companions, and even to adults. This is a 
typical response from a parent: " I have practised a while on 
the idea of story-telling for the entertainment of the never end- 
ing source of amusement of the little folks, and am convinced 
that ' it pays. ' I am only troubled by a lack of native genius, 
and must fall back on books which always disappoint the list- 
ener. ' ' To the savage it is no figure of speech to call upon 
the sun to behold some heroic deed which he has committed, 
nor is it to the child who looks out at the moon and says, 
" Moon hides her face behind the clouds; " or " Rain, rain, go 
away, come again some other day." One observer says, 
" When I was a child and heard thunder, I thought it was the 
voice of a man behind the clouds." To the child as to the 
primitive man, this fairy-land is very human in its conception 
and organization. Its inhabitants live much as human beings 
do. They eat and drink, they love and hate, they are grateful 
for benefits received, and reward a kindness. But they do not 
forget to avenge a wrong or an offence. This fairy-land is 
more than human, since its inhabitants are neither bounded by 
time nor space. They possess unbounded magical power and 
heroic qualities which far excel human attributes. Nor are 
civilized people so far removed from this spirit of animism. 
Civilized man still kicks the stone which bruised his foot, and 
our poetry abounds with it, and has so far kept it alive in 



42 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

appropriate metaphors and similes. We can, then, in the realm 
of the mythical and make-believe, see something of the longing 
of the soul of childhood and primitive folk as it tries to seize 
upon and understand the world of sense. The dominant activ- 
ity (imagination) during this period, as Ribot says, is not 
adulterated by the intrusion and the tyranny of the rational 
elements. We have probably not yet begun to realize the im- 
portance of this period in the development of the language 
interest. For it is here that the attributes of things coagulate 
and float oflF in the mental nebula and become attached to 
some purely mythical being, to a Santa Claus, a doll, a pet, or 
what not, wath all the eccentricities and peculiarities, without 
reference to time or space, which is, however, simple and lies 
within the child's mental grasp. As the child's personality 
grows to take in the family, the school, and community, the 
ideal must climb steadily by transferring and extending these 
attributes from the imaginary character, from Santa Claus, dolls, 
pets, etc., to parents, brothers, and sisters, and mates of the 
school and community. If this view be correct, then some of the 
training which children are receiving to-day is not in harmony 
with child development, since many intelligent parents look 
upon the stories of Santa Claus and child-mythology with sus- 
picion, because ' ' they are not true. ' ' One conscientious mother 
writes, " I cannot account for the fact that my children have a 
desire for the blood-thirsty stories of Jack the Gia^it Killer^ 
Little Red Riding Hood, and similar blood-thirsty stories, when 
the sight of the real article, blood, sets most of them to quiver- 
ing." "I believe," she continues, '' \\\2X Jack the Giant Killer 
and .similar stories should be as carefully kept from the little 
children as the cheap dime novel is kept from the growing boy 
until the desire for good, wholesome stories is formed." An 
observer reports, " When I was a child, I used my story-telling 
to protect myself from some punishment or trouble. ' ' In answer 
to some of these difficulties, we can but refer to the fundamen- 
tal law of growth which appears in all life, the law of adjust- 
ment as set forth by Paola L,ombroso (48, p. 379): " The law 
of the economy of effort subordinated by that of the protection 
of the ego (moi)," says Lombroso, "is the great lav/ of the 
psychological life of the infant. ' ' This law is very well illus- 
trated in the development of language. In general, the sensory 
development precedes the 7notor. The infant, we saw, had 
definite ideas sometime before it could express those ideas by 
means of vocal language. It could recognize the source of its 
food and members of the family before it could call them by 
name. So the child may build, indeed must build, out of its 
sense-experience many "air castles " before it can give a crude 
description of a single one, whether by voice or gesture. The 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHII^DREN. 43 

motor development in language experience is so slow and slug- 
gish that it holds in check, for want of ability to express, ex- 
cursions of the mind, until experience with life itself causes it 
to discriminate between the real and the fictitious. The real 
danger appears to come from the other direction; namely, in- 
sufl&cient and unsuitable language material which lies within 
the range of its experience out of which the mind can build 
large and varied speech co-ordinations. For, if myth and folk- 
lore are withheld during the early years, and reading, which is 
slower still than speech, is forced upon the child at five or six, 
and a year later writing, which is still a more cumbersome 
mode of expression, we may appreciate something of the influ- 
ence of these slower forms of expression in retarding the growth 
of thought and language powers, thus causing arrested devel- 
opment. If to this we add the criticism which has been 
expressed by Dr. Harris, that the child is drilled in such com- 
binations as, "A fat cat sat on a mat. He had a rat, etc.," 
until it loses its sense of euphony, and acquires a habit of mak- 
ing English sentences with villainous cacophonies. " Here," 
says Dr. Harris, " is produced a fixed habit, an arrested devel- 
opment of the culture of the ear for pleasant sounding speech." 
Here, then, we have the primary cause of bad English: First, 
in causing an arrest of the mind action itself by chilling the 
mental tendrils (curiosity and questions) by an unsympathetic 
attitude toward its early cravings, by giving material which 
does not appeal to the interest; and second, by forcing upon 
the mind prematurely the slower forms of expression, — reading 
and writing. 

The positive suggestions, as drawn from the facts of this study, 
looking toward the proper training, may be summed up as 
follows: 

1. Place the child in a rich language environment, -and let 
it come in contact with 7iature. 

2. The parent or teacher should keep in a sympathetic re- 
lation with the child by answering its questions conscientiously, 
thus encouraging it in its longings to understand the environ- 
ment in which it lives. 

3. Since the child's mind has limited experience with the 
objective world, and lives largely in the realm of fancy, such 
selections of myth and folk-lore should be told to it as lie within 
its power of appreciation as to its rhythmic, imaginary, and 
dramatic qualities. 

4. The child should be permitted and encouraged to relate 
its own stories and facts of its own experience in its own way. 
If there is a tendency to report facts differently than they ap- 
pear from the adult point of view, it should be remembered that 
to the child these things appear larger and colored by its own 



44 THE I.ANGUAGE INTEREST OP CHILDREN. 

pre-perceptions. The natural method of correcting these im- 
aginary differences is to send the child back to nature to verify 
its observations. 

5. Since the auditory memory is especially strong, and there 
is an interest in new words, this is the period to begin to learn 
literary gems and the time to learn to speak a foreign tongue. 

6. Due to the development of the vocal organs, this is the 
time for rote singing of the folk-songs. 

7. Since this is the period of spontaneous play, the best 
method to pursue is, again, "to let the child alone in a rich 
language and natural environment, and set it a good example." 

2. The Pre-adolescent Period. 

The period from seven to eleven or twelve has generally been 
recognized as a period of re-adjustment, an intermediary stage 
of life between the stages of greatest physical growth and func- 
tional maturity. It is introduced by a period of physical dis- 
turbances, as teething, changes in the vascular system, etc., 
accompanied by a loss of vitality, after which growth is uni- 
formly less rapid. The senses are alert; muscular and mental 
co-ordinations are advancing rapidly; verbal memory is at its 
best; and the imagination, having been tamed down by experi- 
ence, is less wild and fanciful. As shown by the studies upon 
play, interests, and ideals, this is a transition period from the 
narrower personal to the broader social self, the plays pass 
from the individual to the organized group games; the ideal is 
extended from the personal acquaintance to some historical, 
literary, or national character. 

The development of the language interest is equally charac- 
teristic. The childish interest in myths and fairy-tales is now 
passing to the stories of life, the narratives. Wissler (86), 
Miss Clara Vostrovsky (83), Barnes (2) and others have 
found that stories, involving the stories of daily life and animals 
in action, are much preferred during this period. ' ' In the child's 
story," says Miss Vostrovsky, "no sentiment is expressed; 
nor are its own feelings referred to. There is little of the aes- 
thetic, no description of person or dress, and not general but 
definite names are used by it. To the child, certain facts or 
conditions produce certain inevitable reactions, and to mention 
these reactions seems to it an utter waste of words. ' ' In the 
child's thought and composition, there is a straightforward 
narrative, which is packed full of vigor and of the "strenuous" 
in life. 

During the period of childhood, as we have seen in the study 
of the rhyming instinct, the soul is often swayed by Nature's 
modes; but in the pre-adolescent stage, the soul appears to 
cadence more to the social rhythm. Miss Fannie Gates found 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 45 

that children of seven generally preferred the lullabies and baby 
songs of home and school, — this interest continuing quite con- 
stant up to eleven. One boy of seven says, ' ' I like Jingle Bells 
because it seems as if you could hear the bells jingling." An- 
other says, "I choose America or Sfar Spangled Ba?iner he- 
cause it is our country's song." There is, however, a gradual 
increase in the interest in National songs, which appeals to 
another impulse. With the extension of the social conscious- 
ness, the historic and the patriotic feelings and emotions manifest 
them.selves in larger impulses. A boy of thirteen says, " I like 
the Marseillaise best because it rouses me up, and the words 
express just what you feel." America, The Battle Hymn of 
the Republic, and others are chosen because they are "' songs of 
freedom," "impressive," "fiery;" the tune is grand and cor- 
responds with the words. The associational element also ap- 
pears in consciousness during this period. One boy of eight 
savs, " I like Pretty Robin because in summer when we open 
th^ window he sings." Girl of eight says, " I like Jesus My 
Sh^herd, Home Sweet Home, In the Green Woods, because 
manima used to sing them to me when I was small." A boy 
of eleven years says, " I like best Pm a Shepherd of the Valley, 
because it seems like the mountains where I used to live, and 
where the sheep used to be." 

These illustrations, which are typical, tend to show that this 
transition period contains many elements of childhood as well 
as the beginnings of new elements which foreshadow the dawn 
of a new day of development. 

( I ) Interest in the Choice of Words. 

The interest in words during this period is significant. As 
the studies of Miss Williams (85) and Mr. Conradi (18) show, 
there is a special delight in new words because of their form, 
they look " pretty " or " queer." Words in which reduplica- 
tions of letters or syllables are prominent are preferred, Missis- 
sippi, zig-zag, lullaby, -murmuring, aurora- borealis, being special 
favorites. The newness, strangeness, and bigness of words 
form another element of interest. Constantinople, delightful, 
extraordinary , circumstantial, ecstasy, are mentioned as being 
especially pleasing. One observer writes, " When about nine 
years old, proper names were quite interesting to me. I re- 
member sitting down with my slate and writing all the proper 
names I could think of, and then getting my spelling-book and 
looking up all the proper names it contained. My dolls never 
kept one name for a ver3- long time. I was always sure to find 
another which I thought prettier than the one in use, and so 
changed it at once for the new one. ' ' 

This interest in which the reduplications of letters or syllables 



46 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

are prominent was more or less consciously the predominant 
element in the earlier period; but there is another interest be- 
sides the interest in the words themselves, which comes to the 
fore-ground of consciousness now; that is, an interest in the 
associations which go with different words. These studies 
show that certain proper names are preferred and others re- 
jected because individul bearers had brought credit or discredit 
upon them. One observer states, " I would not have a brother 
named Clarence lest the name should make him as disagreeable 
as certain boys of that name that I know." Another says, 
that she believed that if one were called by the name of a 
flower, as Violet, she would certainly possess the qualities of 
the flower, those qualities being carried by the name, — the 
name being a characteristic which helped to make the person. 
History reveals the fact that Christian names as well as sur- 
names still have their associated meaning: Thus, Anthony is 
priceless; Augustus, imperial; Clara, bright; Priscilla, old; 
Rufus, red or red hair; Sylvester lived in the country; Mary, 
the most popular of English girls' names, is of Hebrew origin 
and meant, according to some authorities, bitterness, according 
to others, stubbornness; but when the name became associated 
with the Virgin it became almost a synonym of purity and holi- 
ness. Younge has shown the same development of the mean- 
ing of names in mythological literature among the Anglo-Saxon 
races. North American Indians and African tribes, we are 
told, largely obtain their names from the association with some 
personal peculiarities, complimentary or otherwise, or as a re- 
sult of some deed of prowess. According to Miss Fletcher, 
they change the name from time to time with elaborate cere- 
monies, as the accomplishments of the individual change. Dr. 
Burk has shown that boys and girls enjoy naming others by 
some, usually uncomplimentary, epithet, and Long-Legs^ Bean- 
pole, Skinny, Reddy, Cry Baby, Scab, and the like, are found 
in everj^ company of plaj' fellows. 

(2) Fonn as Seen in the Economy of Expression. 

Several facts stand out in clear relief in the development of 
the language interest of this period. First, the passing from a 
predominantly sensori-motor toward an associative type of mind. 
The child begins to see a larger meaning in the facts of sense 
experience. As Barnes (3) has shown, words grow richer in 
content. The child, on hearing a word, will by euphonic anal- 
ogy jump at a conclusion as to the meaning. Thus, 36 out of 
200 children in a Vv'estern State defined monk as a little squirrel; 
one defined it as a chipmonk; others confused it with mo7ikey; 
still others had a vague sense of its meaning; as, "a monk is 
an old man," "monk means cruel," "monk is a rank," "peo- 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 47 

pie that used to live in Spain. ' ' The years from seven to eleven 
are years of rapid progress in the content of words. The same 
is shown in a study of Schoenrich's experiment (71). He dic- 
tated the words Christopher Columbus and Chicago to children 
7, 8, 9, and 10 years of age. The results show that the child's 
word-forms are but a bare ghost of the original. Christ ot 
Columbus, Krist of Colonembes, Kristtofcollumbus, Chickorgo, 
Schickkoga, Schigo, Sechcoler, Chickkeargo, are some of the 
distorted remains of these two words. 

Before this period, there is a delight in everything that makes 
a strong appeal to the senses. Motor activity is spontaneous 
and lacks co-ordination, so that the expression inadequately 
represents the copy. Second, during this period, as Dr. Han- 
cock has shown (55), there is a rapid stride in the development 
of the speech form. The speech form of children is character- 
ized by connected narrative; there are few articulations and 
subordinate statements. All verbs are essentially principal 
verbs connected by arids. There is no real sentence division; 
the stops are not determined by a .sentence sense, but rather by 
pauses for breath. The use of simple sentences decreases about 
thirty per cent, from ten to fifteen years of age, with the great- 
est change from perhaps eleven to twelve and thirteen to four- 
teen, especially in boys; while there is a rapid increase in the 
use of the complex sentences from ten to eleven years. The 
percentages of subordinate sentences show, — first, the relative 
increase in number used; second, the relative proportion of 
each kind used at eleven and fourteen. The number of sub- 
ordinate sentences (adverbial, adjective, and substantive) used 
increases rapidly from ten to eleven years for both boys and 
girls. The adverbial subordinate sentence is the kind most 
frequently used by children during this period. The child still 
makes many errors in form of expression, both oral and written. 
To quote from Professor Barnes's comments (2), — " One can- 
not help feeling as he reads this story (Robinson Crusoe) that 
the boy could not have both the eager desire to write, and 
what we ordinarily consider a proper respect for graramer, 
spelling, and punctuation. This boy has some rudimentary 
respect for form, as we see by the way in which he inserts 
periods and commas here and there, by the way in which he 
occasionally reverts to capitals; but his forms never get between 
him and his subject. They are like the clothes of South Sea 
Islanders, — reserved for Sunday service." 

In the study of form and expression, we see again the opera- 
tion of the principle of economy. But, it being the time of 
rapid motor co-ordination, its operation is apparent in the in- 
tensification of energy in thought expression. The many loose 
compouiad sentences with three or more predicates so charac- 



48 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN, 

teristic of childhood are combined by condensed or suppressed 
forms, thus changing the form from the child's mode of expres- 
sion to the simple complex and compound sentences of a more 
mature mind. This process, says Mr. Hancock, may continue 
still farther, and what was at one stage historically a co-ordinate 
member of a compound sentence becomes at the next a subor- 
dinate sentence; at a later stage it appears as an infinitive, 
participle, or conjunctive clause; and later still it may be found 
a single word, or prepositional phrase, doing in this as much 
work as in its earlier form. 

Third, there is a greater exactness of memory, and in the 
economy of expression there appears a greater precision, which 
manifests itself in the use of more exact and concise statements 
without flowery embellishments; precision and slang increase 
gradually between nine and eleven in both boys and girls. 

(3) Summary and Deductions. 

When we turn to the matter of training, this period is in 
many respects unique. 

The child, in the sensori-motor stage, lives in a world of 
things; its mental images are clear or vague according to the 
vividness of the experience. The mother-tongue has been 
largely acquired as a matter of experience; the vocabulary will 
be large or small, the content of words rich or barren, accord- 
ing to the language heard and the facts experienced. Child- 
hood essentially emphasizes the sensory function of language 
with the motor function in the background. If a foreign lan- 
guage is to be learned, psychological principles demand the 
object of sense before the auditory symbol. The mind must 
become conscious of a new experience and feel the need of an 
appropriate symbol by which the experience may be labeled 
and recalled before the word is given. 

During later childhood or pre-adolescence, when the motor 
centres with their connecting associations develop more rapidly, 
when speech co-ordinations are becoming habitual, and words 
begin to have a larger associative meaning, the process of in- 
struction should vary. The child should now be required in a 
measure to reverse the process; it should be required to gather 
up the particular facts of experience, organize these, and ex- 
press them in oral speech. This will stimulate the associative 
processes and give control of the motor co-ordinations. ' ' The 
child," says Dr. Hall, "should live in a school of sonorous 
speech. He should hear and talk for hours each day. He 
must have less reading, less writing." This will require the 
individual to gather up the associations of his experience 
and express them by the most direct circuit. Miss Williams 
(85, p. 294) has called attention to the paralyzing effect of the 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 49 

fear of ridicule and unsympathetic criticism, in a period when 
hearing is often imperfect, due to an improper perception for 
the sound of the word; when associations are rapidly forming 
and the child mistakes the connection; when motor co-ordina- 
tions are still imperfect, mistakes are inevitable, and every sug- 
gestion intended for speech development should be to stimulate 
mind activity, which in turn will find the proper channel of 
expression. Many ' ' so called ' ' errors are simply characteristic 
of growth, which growth alone can eradicate. 

Summary. 

I. Since this is the " Golden Age " of verbal memory and 
the period of rapid motor co-ordination, after the mother- tongue 
has been acquired, the training given should be as follows: 

1. Systematic drill in the correct pronunciation and content 
of words. 

2. If the child has not yet learned to read and write, this is 
the period of systematic instruction, and the mechanics of these 
arts should be almost reduced to reflex acts. 

3. This is the period in which the child should learn a for- 
eign language by the conversational method. 

4. Correct form should be given in examples of literature 
rather than by didactic instruction in grammatical forms. The 
spirit must not be sacrificed to the letter. 

II. Since this is the time when the child's ideal extends to 
broader fields of acquaintance, to historical, literary, or national 
characters, the training should be accordingly: 

1 . To make the child acquainted with the lives and deeds 
of the great characters of the race. 

2. To saturate the child's mind with the masterpieces of 
the literature of the race, in order to keep his thoughts and 
feelings in rapport with the race. 

3. To let the child live in sonorous speech, and let him talk 
much the thoughts of his best experience. 

III. Period op Adolescence: or The Secondary Period 

OF lyANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT. 

The passing of the Golden Gate of Childhood into the Storm 
and Stress Period of Life has been recognized in strange and 
significant ways by both primitive and civilized people. The 
feasts, ceremonies, and many mystic rites are monuments along 
the line of progress. The physical changes of this period, as 
is well known, are increased growth and functional maturity. 
The voice changes; in girls, it grows richer in tone; in boys, 
it falls an octave in tone and changes in its general quality. 
The psychological changes have been observed in an increased 
mental activity, as manifested by the keenness of senses, the 



50 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHIIvDREN, 

hopes, longings, passions, dreams, and temptations, by the fuller 
development of the rational powers, and the changes in the 
social and religious ideals. 

( I ) Interest in Nature and Reading. 

The changes that occur in the language interest are as sig- 
nificant. The longing of the soul is now apparent, as shown 
by the studies of Lancaster (46), Chase (14), WiUiams (85), 
Conradi (18). and others, in a desire to get near to Nature in 
her various moods and forms. It is here that the adolescent 
soul finds a sympathetic response which brings rest and self- 
control. It is to Nature that the disturbed soul flies to find a 
refuge from its warring impulses. Nature invites and gives 
time and quietness for thoughts and meditation which the 
awakening soul demands in order to adjust itself to the new 
order of things. The curve which marks the love of nature, 
as found by I^ancaster, rises rapidly from eleven to twelve, cul- 
minates at thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years, and then grad- 
ually declines again. 

The desire to extend the bounds of experience may again be 
observed when the soul takes flight in books, in what has been 
called the * ' reading craze. ' ' This passion, as the studies show, 
coincides exactly wnth the love of nature, increasing gradually 
from eleven to twelve, rapidly from twelve to fourteen, culmi- 
nating at fifteen, and then gradually decreasing to twenty. 
Lancaster (46) has further collected facts from the biographies 
of two hundred eminent novelists, poets, inventors, and artists, 
and found that one hundred and twenty, or sixty per cent., 
experienced a period of the ' ' reading craze. ' ' 

F., 23. I was allowed to read just what I chose, and chose to read 
everj'thing I could get at thirteen. For two years, it was a great 
passion. 

F., 23. I read Ivanhoe many times at thirteen, so that I could re- 
peat pages and pages of it. Passionately fond of Roe's novels at 
fourteen. Poems of Nature, especially Scott's Melrose Abbey, and 
Tennyson's Saifit Agnes' Eve, and Longfellow's Legend Beautiful, 
were imprinted on my memory never to fade. Whereas poems studied 
and recited as tasks have all faded. 

M., 32. At fourteen and fifteen I read the life of Napoleon. It 
made an immense impression on me. I tried to dress like Napoleon, 
copied dozens of pictures of him. At eleven and twelve I read novels, 
the more the better; read in bed, on the stairs, everywhere; neglected 
everything else. 

F. At twelve to sixteen, read mostly boy's books. At twelve, I be- 
came perfectly wild over Duchess' and Laura Jean Libby's books. 
From eleven to fourteen I read everything — detective stories, dime 
novels, Sunday school books, standard authors, religious papers, news- 
papers, magazines. Sat up in bed till after midnight. At thirteen, I 
read nine novels in one week. From twelve to fourteen I read four 
books a week. 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 5 1 

M., 18. As a child, I was delighted with fairy-tales aud characters 
in action only. Became a great reader of fiction and poetry at the 
adolescent period. 

Edison attempted to read through the Detroit Free Library, and 
read fifteen solid feet before he was stopped. 

Alex. Murray, at fifteen, in one and one-half years, acquired almost 
unaided the Latin, Greek, French, and Hebrew languages, aud read 
several authors in each. 

Franklin, at thirteen, read poetry all night, and wrote verses and 
sold them on the streets of Boston. 

Bryant had poor health till fourteen, when he changed permanently 
to good health. He was a devoted lover of nature, aud began to write 
poetry at nine. From twelve to fifteen, he was deeply religious, aud 
prayed for poetic genius. He wrote Thanatopsis in his eighteenth 
year, 

Howells wrote an essay on human life at nine. He was on a news- 
paper from twelve to fourteen. 

Holmes wrote poetry at fifteen. 

Joseph Henry at ten followed a rabbit under the Public Library at 
Albany, and found a hole in the floor that admitted him to the shelves. 
He took down a book which interested him so much that he read all 
the fiction in the librarj'. 

T. B. Read had a passion for reading from twelve to thirteen. He 
ran away at seventeen, painted, acted, and wrote poetry. 

Simultaneously with the increased interest in Nature and in 
books, the feeling toward God changes to a more sympathetic, 
deep seated, emotional sentiment. The interest in music and 
art changes from the more sensuous to that which admits of 
thought or emotional interpretation; the musical drama is pre- 
ferred to the merely melodious or rhythmic; the work of art 
which portrays a drama of life to the gorgeous or highly col- 
ored. "I see the soul of the artist now in the picture." 
" My pulse quickens at the sight of a fine painting." "At 
thirteen I longed to be a sculptor. " "A deep and discriminat- 
ing love for pictures came at eighteen." " From eight to 
twelve, I liked pictures of birds, boys, and girls. Now I like 
pictures in which there is sentiment." " At fifteen, a picture 
of Angelo's Madonna suddenly struck me with a beauty that 
nothing else has ever made me feel." These manifestations 
all go to show that the adolescent soul is becoming serious and 
thoughtful, and, to satisfy its cravings, spontaneously turns to 
the two great storehouses of modern thought. The motives 
given for turning to Nature and books are at least suggestive 
to parents and teachers. Nature seemed real, gave a strange 
thrill of companionship. The trees, flowers, and birds seemed 
to understand the soul. Nature inspired pure thoughts and 
gave relief to the overwrought feelings. The reading of books 
gave pleasure, stirred the emotions, aroused the imagination. 
Others read because they loved to read, to gain knowledge, 
to increase the vocabulary. And still others because it was 
/'the fashion" to be able to say that they had read many 
books. 



52 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

The kind of literature preferred is shown by the statements 
of the readers themselves, and also from the replies of forty- 
nine librarians in answer to the following questions asked by 
Dr. Chase: (i) At what age would you say there is the great- 
est demand for books? (2) Do boys and girls differ in respect 
to age? (3) Do they differ in the intensity of the book craze? 
The answers generally agreed in that from ten to fourteen there 
is the greatest demand for books. Among the poorer classes, 
the boys and girls differ little in respect to age; but among 
wealthier children, the girls are two years in advance of the 
boys. The poorer girl wants fairy love, while her more ad- 
vanced sister is more apt to be devouring emotional literature 
of the Elsie Densmore style. I am often asked for a sad story 
by my twelve-year-old girls. It is a matter of common ob- 
servation that at this age boys begin to react against the 
pathetic or sentimental, and prefer the out-of-door stories of 
life and action, while girls still cling to the emotional and sen- 
timental. Professor Bullock (8) found by inquiring into the 
literature read by fifteen hundred Colorado pupils between the 
ages of ten and eighteen, that the maximum amount of read- 
ing is done on the average in the seventh grade, at an average 
age of fourteen and one-tenth years, and that the girls reach 
their maximum a year earlier than do the boys. He also found 
•that in boys the years from fourteen to sixteen are the years 
for love of adventure and war stories. Ninety-five per cent, 
of the boys preferred stories of adventure at sixteen, and eighty- 
six per cent, preferred war stories at fifteen; while eighty per 
cent, of the girls preferred stories of adventure, and fifty-five 
percent., war stories at thirteen. Stories of great men were 
preferred next in order by seventy per cent, of the boys at six- 
teen, and love stories by seventy-five per cent, of the girls at 
eighteen and seven-tenths years. 

F. Books that worked up the feelings, that were either sad or 
exciting. 

F. From thirteen to sixteen, books which were emotional. Before 
that, books of travel and adventure. 

M. History and animal stories, because they were in our library at 
home. 

M. Adventure, travel, history. 

M. I liked to read about explorers and inventors. 

M. I hated sad stories that made me cry; I wanted something 

stirring. . ■, , 

F. Historic romances aud pictures of court life. I liked the splen- 
dor of their descriptions. It was all so different from my own plain 
life. 

F. Story books, novels, and Sunday school library books. 

F. I don't know why, but when I was fourteen or fifteen I liked to 
read about funerals and people dying. The sadder it was the better I 
liked it. ^ , 

M. Generally, when we chose, we boys liked thrilling and dare- 
devil stories. I liked biographies of war heroes. 



the; language; interest of children. 53 

M,, 14. Peck's Bad Boy, Diamond Black, Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, 
Wandering Bill. 

F., 12. The Outlaw's Bride, Against Fate, The Beautijul Wretch, 
What Love Will Do, Mona's Choice, One Life, One Love. 

F. Most iuterestiug books I have ever read are East Lynne and 
Repented at Leisure. 

One of the chapters of the L,anguage Interest which reveals 
how little the adolescent mind is really understood, and how 
little its needs are administered to by modern society, is that of 
clandestine reading. While the studies in this field have not 
gone very far, yet those of Professor lyancaster (46), Dr. Chase 
(14) and others go to show that surreptitious reading among 
young people is more frequent than is generally supposed by 
parents and teachers, and that its influence is unwholesome if 
not in some cases pernicious. Of the three hundred seventy- 
six cases reported by Dr. Chase, sixty-five per cent, of the men 
and forty-six per cent, of the women reported a period of clan- 
destine reading. The motives for such reading are character- 
istic of the adolescent mind. The reading habit has already 
been formed. Sixty-four per cent, clandestinely sought infor- 
mation which was withheld from them by parents or teachers; 
twenty-three per cent read forbidden or condemned books; 
thirteen per cent, read in stolen time. The seriousness of this 
problem is apparent. Overwhelmed as the adolescent is with 
new impulses, feeling the restraint of the old life, he is given 
to solitude; if he does approach his elders with questions which 
to him are all important and meets with an unsympathetic re- 
spouse, or what is worse, a denial, his mind rebels and he 
seeks elsewhere. 

F. Yes, read one book that way; it answered some questions I was 
anxious to investigate. 

F. Read silly novels on the sly, 

M. Read Dick Turpin, an act of rebellion against the narrow re- 
straint put on my reading at home, my father being a Puritan in other 
matters. 

F. I remember having read one book in that way. I think I read 
it because I knew my mother didn't want me to, and was curious to 
learn the reason. 

M. Yes, to see if I had certain diseases that I imagined I had. 

F. Yes, I did read books secretly. I read in regard to the propaga- 
tion, if it may be so called, of the human race. 

F. To obtain lawful information which might better have been 
given me by my mother, 

F. A period of low-down story papers given me by my friend, Nellie, 
in the kitchen, which by times I tore up for their bad English, and 
wept in secret for their love scenes. 

M. He (my brother) was at the age when he and his friends thought 
it ' smart ' to invest in nickel novels of the Nick Carter and pirate 
sort, and read them in their shanty, constructed in an empty lot. 
Some of the novels found their way to the house, and my mother, with 
the same apparent interest as in other books, and without comment, read 
patiently at these till the boy — the chaim of secret reading removed — 



54 THS LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

of his own accord became disgusted with the improbabilities of the 
stories and gave them up. 

(2) Forms of Expression. 

When we tuna to the side of expression, the phenomena are 
characteristic. Adolescence is marked by periods of rapid ex- 
pansion when new impulses break forth with such overwhelm- 
ing power, and the content of the mind enriches with such 
rapidity as to leave behind the motor development; in conse- 
quence, the adolescent like the infant lacks muscular co-ordi- 
nation and control and becomes awkward in his movements, 
often self-conscious in the extreme. Something akin to a self- 
conscious period may be observed in language. Before this 
period, language was a more or less spontaneous form of ex- 
pression with the element of pleasure centered chiefly in the 
motor and auditory sides; but now, with the changes of men- 
tal attitude, voice, etc., the interest changes from a subjective, 
undifferentiated to a differentiated, conscious, and objective 
element of the self — an instrument of thought to be used, 
changed, re-adjusted to meet certain ends. The adolescent 
mind may at times be thronged with new experiences; new 
emotions may stir it; new views of life may appear; but for the 
expression of these impulses, the old language vocabulary may 
be entirely inadequate, and the youth may in spite of the sup- 
plication of Phoenix to Achilles ' ' sit as dumb for want of words, 
idle for skill to move." There are periods when the youth 
seems tongue-tied; at times the insipient forms of expression 
end in vain imaginings; he sees himself the orator addressing 
learned bodies of people or the centre of a social circle; or per- 
haps winning fame by writing a poem or novel. There are 
other times when poems are committed and recited; when 
attic poetry is actually produced. There are still other times 
when the youth plunges with great vehemence into oratory and 
debate. That the adolescent does experience such a dumb- 
bound feeling is clearly shown by studies which have thus far 
been made. 

The Dumb-Bound Feeling. 

The studies of Miss Williams (85) and Mr. Conradi (18) go 
to show that the adolescent does become painfully conscious of 
the breach between the mind's content and its power of vocal 
expression. "The thoughts and feelings come too fast" for 
the channels of expression. This feeling of dumbness may be 
further augmented when the adolescent matches his own naive 
expression in speaking with those of his ' ' superiors ' ' who use 
correct grammatical forms and literary style. To overcome 
this embarrassing predicament the individual ' ' takes a spirt. ' ' 



THE I^ANGUAGK INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 55 

To fill Up the ' ' vocal gap ' ' he seizes upon words, phrases, slang 
expressions, and appropriates these with eagerness and enthu- 
siasm; foreign languages are easily acquired; the uninteresting 
spelling-book, dictionary, and lexicon are voluntarily studied in 
order to find suitable terms that shall express in an exact, con- 
cise, emphatic, yet in a "beautiful," informal, and natural, 
manner just what the soul experiences. The more explosive 
expressions appear in the forms of oaths, and even swearing 
itself is indulged in with impunity. To cultivate a "literary 
style" many individuals imitate the style of their instructors, 
conversationalists, and literary writers. During later adoles- 
cence, when the power of expression has developed, there is in 
many cases a positive reaction against imitation. Slang is 
considered vulgar; the adolescent thinks its influence upon 
English is bad, or, as others think, it leads to swearing, which 
is positively bad. 

— I4-I5. Could not fiud words to express my feelings. I had grand 
and airy thoughts, but could not express them. 

M., 17. Very difficult to think and speak at the same time; came 
to feel dumb-bound. 

M., 21. Hard to express myself when with those who are not in 
sympathy with me. 

M., 19. I find it hard to use good grammar when with my superiors. 

F., 28. From twelve to eighteen I was fluent and never failed for a 
word. Criticism at eighteen for use of language made me conscious 
and stumbling. 

M. About twelve I had feelings too deep for me to express. 

F., 17. The dumb-bound feeling expresses my condition exactly. 
This is especially <rue when I feel that a thing is so. 

F., 20. I have found it harder to express myself; that is, I have far 
more thoughts, but cannot readily put them into words. The thoughts 
seem ready to burst forth, but the words will not come. 

F., 23. If a little embarrassed at thirteen, I found it almost impos- 
sible to talk. 

M., 18. Find it much harder to express my thoughts, especially if 
it is something I feel deepl}'. 

F., 28. Seems harder for me to express myself in words than ever ; 
for I hear others talk well, and in trying to choose my language, I find 
that the right words will not come at the right time. I do not want to 
use my baby language, and so find it hard to say what I want to. If I 
used my old language, I could say it easily. 

It is reported of Webster that he could not rise to speak be- 
fore the school at fourteen, that he was fond of nature and soli- 
tude; and that his oratory of the Boscawen days smacked of 
academic artificiality and floridity, that the style was strained 
and stilted, due perhaps to his growing thoughts which could 
not readily adapt themselves to simple words, but associated 
more naturally with larger expressions. 

"Studied dictionary to find new words." 

" Used large words to talk to myself." 

" Two girls used sodium chlorate and H^O at home." 



56 THE IwANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

"Studied dictionary, soon got tired. Had read life of Shakespeare 
and learned range of his vocabulary." 

" Used to like to write words with the letters w, n, a, e, o." 

" Learned foreign words from spelling book and tried to use them." 

Adolesence has its periods of primal secrecy, when the soul 
at times quiets down. It shrinks from human society, and 
longs to be alone with Nature and its own longings and rever- 
ies. Lancaster has shown that there are those who long for 
the solitudes of Nature as early as eight and nine years, but 
that it becomes a passion at thirteen and fourteen. This new 
life calls for a language which is at once apparent in the so 
called Secret Languages of Children. 

Dr. Krauss (45), Dr. Chrisman (15), and Thomas Higgin- 
son have given illustrations of this form of language, and have 
shown that its use is well-nigh universal among civilized peo- 
ple. The languages are produced partly in the interest of the 
secrecy which the youth feels, in order that conversation may 
be carried on without disturbance or divulgence; and partly in 
response to the new ideas and impulses of the pre-adolescent 
and adolescent ages. Dr. Chrisman collected a large number 
of these languages in use among American children and found 
that the curve of secret languages begins as early as five or six, 
increases rapidly from nine to twelve, culminates at approxi- 
mately the age of twelve or thirteen, and then declines again to 
seventeen or eighteen years. Col. Higginson reports the lan- 
guage of two girls of thirteen who had made their " dialect " 
in the most vivid sense a living language, in that new words 
were constantly being added. " Many of the words are expres- 
sions of certain subtle shades of feeling which are constantly 
called forth in new forms by new experiences. They have now 
more than two hundred words arranged in a manuscript dic- 
tionary." 

Mr. G. Schlegel (45) observed the use of secret languages 
especially among school-going boys and girls in Hungary. 
Their purpose in using them was to communicate in a language 
not understood by the teachers. "On going to China," he 
says, ' ' I was therefore not a little astonished, when arriving 
in the year 1858 in Amory (China), to detect a similar secret 
language among the Chinese children constructed upon the 
same principles. It was called the sa-la language, and the 
dodge consisted in doubling or trebling the syllable, and chang- 
ing the initial consonant into s or /. E. g., god ka li kong (I to 
5'ou say) became gohloasoa kalasa lilisi k6nglo7igso7ig.'^ Dr. 
Krauss' collection of over one hundred fifty specimens of se- 
cret languages in use among European children verifies what 
Dr. Chrisman found true of the large number in use among 
American children, that many of these languages have been 



The IvAnguagE interest of children. 57 

handed down from generation to generation, sometimes chang- 
ing in part to suit the user's purpose. In other cases, individ- 
uals have deliberately arranged a system of characters for 
communication. The sacred dialects not infrequent among 
barbarous nations, and the arbitrary perversions of the con- 
juror, according to Max Miiller, are analogous to the secret 
slang dialects of the schoolboy, the European representative of 
the barbarian. At Winchester, for example, a secret jargon 
has been handed down from generation to generation, into 
which every new-comer is duly initiated like a fresh member of 
the thieves' fraternity. The motives for using the language, 
as given, are for the purpose of secrecy, the mere love of using 
a language different from the ordinary, so that those outside 
of a circle or ' ' clique ' ' are debarred from understanding the 
proceedings of the selected few, or to send cipher messages 
in the form of written characters, taps, eye winks and the like. 
Still others use it in imitation of older children. 

Dr. Chrismau found that the written or cipher languages 
were generally of local invention, and were not as the spoken 
handed down. He furthermore classified all the secret lan- 
guages which he found roughly into six general classes, — the 
syllabic, alphabetic, sign, vocabulary, reversal, and a miscel- 
laneous class. Some of these possess considerable logical order, 
and rest upon definite principles; others, as the alphabetic, are 
wholly arbitrary, and consist of detached words and phrases 
which are learned by those wishing to use the language. 

"I wished to know it so that I might be able to talk with my 

cousins." 

" We did not wish others to understand what we were saying." 
" To conceal from a sister four years younger." 

" For the purpose of writing communications during school hours." 
"To occasionally mystify our elders by using strange words." 
"In imitation of the older classes who were reciting in Latin aud 

Greek." 

Adolescence, however, has its periods of language eruptions 
when silence is impossible. In some cases, this may not pass 
beyond the incipient stages. The youth sees himself, in imag- 
ination, addressing a multitude or winning fame by his literary 
works, a form of expression which is perhaps more common 
during early adolescence, or the period of rapid growth. Others 
become eloquent in telling thrilling stories to a company of in- 
timate friends. Others repair to the attic chamber to give 
expression to their thoughts in prose or verse. Mr. Conradi 
found among the two hundred and two returns that forty-three 
per cent, had experienced a definite period of spontaneous poe- 
try writing; and Mr. Lancaster reports that fifty-eight of the 
one hundred and twenty famous persons whose biographies he 
studied had written poetry at an average age of fifteen. 



58 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

Tolstoi says in his biography: " I would fancy myself some 
great man who had discovered new truths for the good of 
humanity, yet was too bashful to meet common people calmly. 
The virtuous thoughts which we had discussed had only pleased 
the mind, had not touched the feelings of the heart. The time 
came, however, when these thoughts returned to my mind 
with such fresh power of moral revelation that I took fright, 
thinking what an amount of time I had been wasting, and I 
resolved that very second to apply these thoughts to actual 
life." Keats experienced a great change in his life at fourteen. 
Mabie says of him: " There comes a time in the life of a boy of 
such gifts when the obscure stirrings become more frequent and 
profound. The imagination no longer hints at its presence, 
but begins to sound its mysterious and thrilling note in the 
soul. There is no other moment so wonderful as this first 
hour of awakening, this dawn of the beauty and wonder and 
mystery of the world, on a nature that has been living only the 
glad unthinking life of the senses. It came to Keats in his 
fifteenth year. It came with that sudden hunger and thirst 
for knowledge which consumes the days with desire as with a 
fire, and fill the young heart with passionate longings to drain 
the cup of experience at a draught. He was at the morning 
hour when the whole world turns to gold. The boy had sud- 
denly become a poet." 

F. I used to mount a barrel iu the barn and imagine myself some 
great speaker with thousands and thousands of the most cultured peo- 
ple listening to me. 

M., 19. At sixteen I got an idea that I was to be a great novelist. 
In the garret I wrote great works. Some of them are titles like The 
Black Hand, and The Lost Lover Reclaimed. I pictured countless 
admirers. 

F., 20. Contemplated a musical career, fifteen to sixteen. I imag- 
ined myself the greatest musician in the world. I could see the audi- 
ences fairly spellbound, hear the applause at the end, and see the 
handkerchiefs wave. Now it is all past. 

F., 18. At thirteen I craved history and religious literature, then 
novels and plays. Had a craze for the opera. Used to write poetry at 
thirteen. Now literature pertaining to God and Nature appeals to me 
most. 

F. At fourteen told stories of desperate characters. 

F., 18. First liked fairy tales, then novels, then books of travel. 
Wanted to write stories, tried, and failed. 

M., 22. I attempted to write poetic prose and unpoetic verse. Read 
Kinsley, Scott, Irving, Bronte, then Curtis, Dante, Schiller, and Shakes- 
peare. 

F., 19. At fifteen I had a time of writing poetry on love, due to 
falling in love with an older and superior girl. 

There is, however, another factor which similarly influences 
the growth of language. With the growth of self- conscious- 
ness, the adolescent instinctively becomes conscious of his per- 
sonal appearance, his dress and manners, and seeks to correct 



THE I.ANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHII.DREN. 59 

any untidy habits; he also puts on ornaments and bodily adorn- 
ments: in short there is a development of what Darwin calls a 
sense of the beautifzil. This love of adornment is seen in lan- 
guage by an introduction of descriptive words, figures of speech 
which sound "pretty," epithets, rhetorical elegance, gems of 
thought from literature, etc. Mr. Conradi found among over 
two hundred cases, forty-two per cent, had experienced periods 
of extreme adjectivism, nounism, or adverbism, principally be- 
tween the ages of twelve and seventeen. Figures of speech 
appeal especially to the later adolescent mind, and this seems 
natural when we recall with Channing the purpose of figurative 
speech, which is understood to be that of fancy, perhaps of dis- 
play, that which animates and delights. The youthful mind 
loves these rich foliages and blossoms of language, and thinks 
less at the moment of the solid trunk of logic and the slowly 
forming fruit beneath. 

When twelve, it seemed to me the more adjectives I used, the more 
expressive my speech would be. 

When twelve, I placed all the adjectives before a noun I could. 

Especially favorite expressions are recorded as follows: Per- 
fectly delightful; glorious good time; a beautiful, magnificent, 
audacious piece of work; the dirtiest, meanest, outlandish 
thing; a handsome, good-looking, attractive young man; the 
sweetest, prettiest, and loveliest hat; an immense, great, big 
house; exquisitely beautiful; simply great; a great, big, beau- 
tiful doll given by my dear, sweet mother. 

A boy in writing to his mother filled half the letter with foreign 
phrases. 

Another person used to pretend to talk in foreign languages by using 
queer sounds and unheard-of words. 

At seventeen: My room-mate and I often take certain lengths of 
time in which we try to be elegant. 

At seventeen: Study unabridged dictionary to be elegant. 

Aged ten: Memorized expressions that seemed elegant, modified 
them, and then used them. 

The tendencies in the use of written language forms of the 
pre-adolescent period continue during this period with an in- 
creasing number of condensed and organized sentence struc- 
tures. This is especially significant in considering the lines of 
the language interest, when we compare it with the develop- 
ment of the form of English literature. Dr. Sherman (73) has 
shown that the Ante-Elizabethan, and even the Elizabethan, 
prose sentences are crabbed and heavy, and it is often necessary 
to re-read before the probable meaning reveals itself, while 
ordinary modern prose is clear and almost as effective to the 
understanding as oral speech. On measuring the number of 
words per period (sentence), taking twenty-five, fifty, one 
hundred and then five hundred periods of each, Professor 



6o THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OP CHILDREN. 

Sherman found the average number of words per period of the 
following authors respectively: Fabyan, 63.02, with as many 
as 141 words in two sentences; Spenser, 49.82, with 152 words 
in two sentences; Hooker, 41.40; Macauley, 22.45; Channing, 
25.73, with 108 words in seven sentences; and Emerson, 20.58, 
with 88 words in eight sentences. In the early prose writings 
there are many predications. Chaucer contains on an average 
of 5.24 predications in an average of 480 periods, with only 
four per cent, of the total number of sentences simple; Spenser, 
an average of 4.68 predications in 500 periods, with eleven per 
cent, simple sentences; Channing, 2.56 predications, with 
thirty-one per cent, simple sentences, each in 500 periods. 
And here, again, as in child language, the change is due, ac- 
cording to Professor Sherman, to the operation of the principle 
of economy and intensification of energy. When the modify- 
ing and modified clauses are presented in mass, all on the same 
basis, the mind of the listener must receive and interpret the 
declarations. This can only be done after inferring the princi- 
pal and subordinate parts. Hearing, consequently, becomes 
more difficult, and interpretation, less accurate; language is 
more obscure. The child instinctively, as his thought power 
grows, passes from the loose, involved, obscure sentence, which 
is halting and stilted, to the new, which furnishes the mind a 
medium of expression consisting of leaps and bounds, touching 
only here and there upon the mountain peaks of thought for a 
clear vision. It leaves much to suggestion and intuition, which 
lies in valleys of the suppressed parts below. This requires a 
different type of mind, one which is able to take a wider view 
as to the meaning of things. This is the important change in 
language structure of adolescence, and when once acquired, 
gives a feeling of at-homeness in general conversation and 
literary thought. 

(3) TraiJiing and Conclusions. 

The highest types of the language interest are represented in 
a clear-cut conversational style, in literature, in literary prose, 
poetry, debate, and oratory, all of which have their regenera- 
tion in the dawn of adolescence. These have ever been the ob- 
jective points of the instructors of youths, every age placing its 
own special emphasis. 

That the Greeks understood the adolescent mind, and ap- 
pealed to the self-assertive and combative instincts, is seen in 
the nature of the instruction which Plato provided, "The 
Platonic myths," says Dr. Hall (31), "are precisely suited to 
the adolescent stage of psychic development, when sentiment is 
three-fourths of life, and symbolism and parables are perhaps 
chief among the methods of reason." If we add to this the 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 6 1 

discussion of the larger questions of life, so full of interest for 
the adolescent, and the dialectic method, we can understand 
why Socrates and the sophists were at once persons of interest 
and admiration for the ephebic youths. 

The poems of Homer abound with proof of the estimation in 
which the powers of oratory were held by the Greeks, and of 
the attention with which it was honored as an object of instruc- 
tion in the education of youth. This is seen when Phoenix 
supplicates Achilles to lay aside his wrath, recalling his father's 
committing care: 

" I, whom thy royal father sent as orderer of thy force. 
When to Atrides from his court he left thee for this course. 
Yet young, and when in skill of arms thou didst not so abound, 
Nor hadst the habit of discourse that makes men so renowned, ' 
In all which I was set by him t' instruct thee as my son. 
That thou mightst speak when speech was fit, and do when deeds 

were done. 
Not sit as dumb for want of words; idle, for skill to move." 

Oratory was the Art of Arts among the ancients. Plato de- 
fined it "as the art of enchanting the soul, and he who would 
be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls— they 
are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the 
differences between man and man. ... He who knows all 
this, and knows when he shall speak and when he should re- 
frain, and when he should use pithy sayings, pathetic appeals, 
sensational effects, and all the other modes of speech which he 
has learned;— when, I say, he knows the time and seasons of 
all these things, then, and not till then, is he perfect master of 
his art." 

The conditions under which oratory developed among the 
Greeks and Romans have been pointed out by Mr. I,. Sears. 
Still other conditions besides a literary atmosphere were neces- 
sary to its freest development; for this form more than any 
other demands favorable surroundings. Poetry may flourish 
in days of adversity, as among the captive Hebrews by the 
waters of Babylon, or in the disordered England, when Milton 
wrote his great epic. Sad prose may be written within prison 
walls, like Sir Walter Raleigh's famous apostrophe to death; 
but eloquence has never been successfully cultivated in captiv- 
ity or under despotisms. It is in free states and under popular 
governments alone that oratory can flourish. The art of per- 
suasion is valuable only as the people can be appealed to on the 
subject of public affairs, and where their judgments can be en- 
lightened for the enforcement of political measures, and their 
feelings aroused sufficiently to lead them into personal activity 
and sacrifice; and where eloquence and freedom go hand in 
hand, the most remarkable exhibitions of human ability occur. 
One of the duties of the Greek citizen was to conduct his own 



62 THE I.ANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

affairs in court, stating his claim and arguing his case. The 
plausible and capable citizen secured his rights while his diffi- 
dent and tongue-tied neighbor could get no redress. And it is 
possible to conceive, rising upon the shoulders of such a popu- 
lace, a Demosthenes, of whom it is said: " He moves, warms, 
and captivates the heart." Every oration of his is a close 
chain of reasoning that represents the generous notion of a soul 
who disdains any thought that is not great. His discourse 
gradually increases in force by greater light and new reasons 
which are always illustrated by bold figures and lively images. 
One cannot but see that he has the good of the republic entirely 
at heart, and that nature itself speaks in all his transports, for 
his artful address is so masterly that it never appears. To 
Quintilian the ideal man was the bo7ius orator with all that that 
implied. 

The Middle Ages placed its emphasis upon dialectics, and 
permitted it to degenerate into a low form of eristics. Alcuin 
and Pepin employed these exercises ad acuendos ptieros (to 
sharpen the wits of the pupils); and they were used, according 
to Drane, by the English teachers as late as the fourteenth cen- 
tury. "What is writing?" asks Alcuin. "The keeper of 
history." "What is speaking?" "The interpreter of the 
soul." " What is the liberty of man ? " "Innocence." Etc., 
etc. In the Mediaeval Universities, instruction partook of two 
forms, — the lecture {lectio, ledum, prcelectio) and the disputa- 
tion. The purpose of the instructor in the former was to set 
forth and explain the text; the purpose of the disputation was 
to elucidate and firmly establish {ponere etdeterminare, arguere 
et disputare). The disputation stood at the middle point ot 
academic life. It was for this that the lectures were prepared, 
and he was the ablest scholar who possessed the greatest amount 
of ready wit and acumen in debate. Upon the disputations de- 
pended faculty honors, and at Padua students were for a time 
required to dispute one hour daily from the opening of the 
academic year to Easter time. The Jesuit appealed to the im- 
pulse of competition and combat by emphasizing disputation 
and debate as the mode of instruction. The modern literary 
societies and debating clubs now found in connection with all 
of the colleges and many secondary schools in America give 
expression to the spontaneous oratorical and debating impulse 
of the adolescent. The history of these societies may be traced 
back to the spontaneous student gatherings of the Middle Ages 
which were held for social purposes and where there was con- 
siderable eating and drinking to stimulate the sluggish mind, 
after which there was some rather bitter, often personal, theo- 
logical disputation. As rapture and enthusiam are the parents 
of poetry, so freedom gives birth to eloquence. The literary, 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 63 

debating, and oratorical societies are at the same time the 
spontaneous expression of, and the training school for these 
spontaneous forms of expression. 

The formal language training for the adolescent to-day in 
many cases still places the emphasis upon the skeleton of lan- 
guage, — the definitions of grammar and rhetoric, the form of 
expression and criticism. Literature is too carefully analyzed, 
and every part properly classified. The composition which the 
student writes is, in many cases, not an expression of his burn- 
ing thoughts upon a subject, or if it chance to be, he is re- 
quired to hang it upon a gambrel outline while it is dressed 
according to the principles of grammar and logic. All these 
methods, at their very best, tend to focus the attention upon 
form rather than spirit, to make the youth over self-conscious 
of that which ought to be unconscious; consequently, as these 
studies clearly show, there is an interference with the natural 
processes of thought. There is a period when the youth ap- 
pears to be mentally ready for grammatical analysis and logic, 
which is, however, after the language interest has well ad- 
vanced in its development and the logical powers manifest 
themselves by an interest in analysis. The youth often be- 
comes a stickler for grammatical form and logical subtleties. 
That is the favorable opportunity for language analysis and 
criticism. 

That the results of modern methods are unsatisfactory to 
pupil, teacher, and parents, one need but read the criticisms. 
Psychology of adolescence and the experience of those races 
which have succeeded in developing a high standard of the lan- 
guage art emphasize the following points: 

I. When the adolescent mind pushes out into nature and 
books, let the opportunities be at hand to feed the soul, thus 
preventing it from turning in upon itself and becoming too 
conscious of its own consuming hunger: i. By permitting it to 
gain experience in a hand to hand contact with nature and real 
life; 2. By permitting it to take its natural flight in books on 
those subjects which appeal to it, — but in both, by sympathetic 
suggestion, direct it in the paths of the race experience and 
literature. 

II. Since the proper form of expression can only develop in 
response to proper thinking, the emphasis must be placed upon 
a stimulation of the thought processes. The youth should be 
permitted to read and commit to memory much good literature 
of interest to him, but he should hear and discuss it more. 

III. Youth is a period of rapid growth, consequently there 
is a period of normal imperfections and abnormalities, which 
growth alone can remedy. The instructor can only wait and 
set a good example. 



64 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OE CHII^DREN. 

IV. The spontaneous impulse to speak, write, recite, debate, 
and declaim should be seized upon and encouraged by success- 
ful practice, and directed by constructive criticism. 

V. Since the interest in the logical processes develops later 
than the expression, and does not necessarily contribute to 
power of expression, grammar and logic should be studied only 
after the language has become well established. 

VI. Since the soul is enriched by contemplating the larger 
problems of life, encourage the youth to engage his mind in 
silent meditation at such moments when it is at its best, even 
though language is inadequate for expression. 

The writer wishes to acknowledge his obligation to President 
G. Stanley Hall for co-operation and helpful suggestions; to 
the other members of the Philosophical Faculty of Clark Uni- 
versity for the interest they have taken throughout the study; 
to Mr. lyouis N. Wilson for his assistance in securing the litera- 
ture in this field of investigation, and to those superintendents 
and instructors who have contributed material and suggestions. 



IV. Bibliography. 

The writer has included only those books and papers that 
stand in close relation to the subject treated. 

1. Ament, WiLiyiAM. Die Entwickelung von Sprechen und Denken 

beim Kinde. Leipzig, 1899, p. 211. 

2. Barnes, Eari,. Studies in Education, Vols. I, II. 

3. BELL, Sanford. The Significance of Activity in Child Life. 

The Independent, Vol. LV, pp. 911-914. 

4. Berg, Dr. W. Die Erziehung zum Sprechen. Leipzig, 1903, 

P- 55- 

5. Bolton, H. C. The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children. Theiran- 

tiquity, origin, and wide distribution. London, 1888, p. 115. 

6. Bowrdon, B. L'expression des Amotions et des tendencies dans 

le langage. Paris, 1892, p. 374. 

7. BrinTon, Dr. D. Primitive Language in Relation to Child-Lan- 

guage. Essays of an Americanist. Phil., 1890. 

8. Bullock, W. Some Observations on Children's Reading. N. E. 

A. Proceedings, 1897, pp. 1015-1021. 

9. Burton, R. Literature for Children. N. Am. Review, Vol. 

CLXVII (1898), p. 278-286. 

10. Calkins, Mary W. Pseudo-Chromesthesia and of Mental Forms. 

Amer. Jour. Psychol., Vol. V, pp. 439-464. 

11. Carter, Alice P. Cultivating the Imagination. Babyhood, 

Vol. II, p. 320. 

12. Chamberlain, A. F. The Child: A Study on the Evolution of 

Man. N. Y., 1901, p. 498. (Bibliography.) 

13. Chambers, W. G. The Evolution of Ideals. Fed. Sent., Vol. X, 

pp. IOI-I43- 

14. Chase, Dr. Susan F. Adolescence: Choice of Reading-Matter. 

Jour, of Adolescence, Jan., Feb., and March, 1901. Child- 
study Monthly, Vol. VI, pp. 322-328. 



THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 65 

15. ChriSman, Dr. O. Secret Languages of Children. Science, 

Vol. XXII, p. 303. N. W. Month., Vol. VIII, pp. 187,375, 
649. 

16. Coi,viN, Stephen S. Invention versus Form in English Compo- 

sition. Ped. Sent., Vol. IX, pp. 393-421. 

17. COMPAYRE, GabrieIv. The Intellectual and Moral Development 

of the Child, Pt. i. Trans, by Mary E. Wilson. N. Y., 1896, 
p. 298. 

18. Conradi, Edward. Children's Interests in Words, Slang, Sto- 

ries, etc. Ped. Sent., Vol. X (1903), pp. 359-404- 

19. Dewey, John. The Psychology of Infant Language. Psychol. 

Review, Vol. I, pp. 63-66. 

20. DUPRAT, M. Etude sur le Mensonge, d'apres nos questionnaire. 

Bulletin de la Soci^t^ Libre pour I'^tude psychologique de 
I'enfant. 2e Annee No. 9. Oct., 1902, pp. 220-229. 
^21. Egger, M. E. Observations et reflexions sur le developpment 
de I'intelligence et du laugage chez les enfants. Paris, 1887, 
p. 102. 

22. Von FrenzEI,. Stufen in der Sprachentwickelung des Kindes. 

Die Kinderfehler Jahrgang, VII, s. 25. 

23. FusTER, Mme. Marie. Observations sur la langage de deux pe- 

tites filles, de 4 mois k 3 ans. Bulletin de la Soci^td Libre 
pour I'^tude psychol. de I'enfant, No. 10 Jan., 1903. 3 Anned. 
Paris, pp. 253-255. 

24. Garbini, a. Evoluzione della voce nell'infanzia. Verona, 1892, 

p. 53. 

25. Gale, M. C. and H. The Vocabularies of two Children of one 

Family to Two and a Half Years of Age. Psychol. Studies, 
Minneapolis, Minn., July, 1900. 

26. Grozmann, M. p. E. Language-Teaching from a Child-Study 

Point of View. Child-St. Month., Vol. IV, pp. 266-278. 

27. Groos, Carl. Das Seelenleben des Kindes. Berlin, 1904, p. 229. 

28. Gutzmann, H. Die Sprachentwickelung des Kindes. Die Kin- 

derfehler Jahrgang, VII, 1902, S. 193-216. 

29. . Die Sprachlaute des Kindes und der Natur-volker. 

Zeits. f. Padagog. Psychol. Jahrg. I. 1899, pp. 28-40. 

30. Hale, Horatio. The Development of Language. Proc. Canada 

Inst., 1888, pp. 92-134. 

31. Hall, G. S. Adolescence, 2 Vols., N. Y., 1904. 

32. . Children's Lies. fed. Sent., Vol. I, pp. 211-218. 

33. . Theodate Smith, Curiosity and Interest. Ped. Sent., 

Vol. X, pp. 315-358. 

34. Hall, Mrs. W. S. First 500 Days of a Child's Life. Child-St. 

Month., Vol. II, pp. 330, 394, 458, 552, 586, 650. 

35. Hancock, J. A. Children's Tendencies in the Use of Written 

Language-Forms. North- Western Month., Vol. VIII, pp. 646- 
649. 

36. HarTland, E. S. Science of Fairy Tales. N. Y., 1897, p. 372- 

37. Haskell, Ellen M. Child Observations, First Series: Imita- 

tions and Allied Activities. Boston, 1896, p. 267. 

38. Herbertson, Mrs. The Beginnings of Childhood. (Some notes 

on the first half of the third year.) Paidologist British, Vol. 
I (1899), pp. 83-93. 

39. Hogan, Louise E. A Study of a Child. N. Y., 1898, p. 220. 

40. HoLDEN, E. S. On the Vocabularies of Children under Two 

Years of Age. Trans. Am. Philological Assoc, p. 12, 1871. 

41. Humphreys, W. A Contribution to Infantile Linguistics. Trans. 

Am. Philo. Assoc, pp. 5-17, 1880; also 1882. 



66 THE LANGUAGE INTEREST OF CHILDREN. 

42. IdELBERGER, H. Hauptproblem der Kindlichen Sprachentwick- 

elung. Zeitschrift fiir Padagogische Psychol, Pathol, uud 
Hygiene. 5 Jahrgang, S. 241, 425. 

43. jEGi, John I. The Vocabulary of a Two- Year-Old Child. Child- 

St. Month., Vol. VI, pp. 241-261. 

44. JORDON, D. S. The Colors of Letters. Pop. Sci. Mo., Vol. 

XXXIX, p. 367, 1891. 

45. Krauss, F. S. Geheime Sprachweisen. Am. Ur-Quell. II Bd. 

(1891). S. 21-23, 48-49, 65, 79-81, 98-99, 111-112, 127-128, 143- 
144, 187-188. Ill Bd. (1892), s. 43-44, 106-107, 135-136, 167, 
225-226, 328. IV Bd. (1893), s. 76-78, 147. V Bd. (1894), s. 
74-78. VI Bd. (1895), s. 37-40. 
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